


you pretended you never got lost

by The_Blonde



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Ballum Big Bang 2020 (Eastenders), Infidelity, Leggings, M/M, Minor Violence, Mutual Pining, Organized Crime, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24827296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde/pseuds/The_Blonde
Summary: "The honest answer, if Ben admits it, is that he doesn’t justlikeCallum, hewantshim. From the moment he saw him in the station waiting room. From the second that Callum looked at him, underneath the bruises. Ben wants all of his goodness and light, all of his softness and gentleness, he wants to always be looked at like he’s a person that deserves to be looked at. He wants Callum waiting for him in every room, he doesn’t want him to get married, he wants to take him far away from the Square but also to stay here so that he can show his dad that it’s possible for him to be happy. He wants to hear Callum’s voice in the mornings, afternoons, evenings, to have Callum notice things about him, to point out the things he likes. He wants Callum’s hands on him again, to be held like he’s something important. He wants he wants. He cannot have."Or: Ben is a gangster's son. Callum is an almost police officer who could save him. Or maybe the saving is mutual.Thanks to my beta,that-crazy-shark-lady, andbisexualalienblastfor the art!
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Comments: 43
Kudos: 139
Collections: Ballum Big Bang 2020





	you pretended you never got lost

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Bleeding Heart" by Regina Spektor. A song that truly could have been written about Ben Mitchell.
> 
> Fic dedicated to and written for Rach and Kay; forever the other members of my supercool Callum Highway Support Gang and the whole reason why this thing exists. I love and am always grateful for you both <3
> 
> (huge thanks also to Jane and Jackie [who has never even watched an ep of EE!] for being lovely first readers and giving me the confidence to actually post)
> 
> You can see the wonderful art for this story [here!](https://leblonde.tumblr.com/post/623525093440733184/bisexualalienblast-ballum-big-bang-2020-you)

Ben notices him first because he’s his type, nothing really deeper than that. He’s the type of the guy that would make Jay lean over in a pub, nod in his direction and say some variation of _he’s up your street isn’t he?_ (Jay does it a lot, bangs their elbows together and says _what about him?_ like he’s doing more of the looking than Ben is). He’s tall and slightly rumpled looking, hair that won’t quite sit flat on his fringe, wears a suit well, big hands, impossibly kind face: exactly Ben’s type, worthy of a glance over, up and down, same as the many guys that Ben has hurried out of his flat at eight in the morning, no different. 

He’s also new. Ben hasn't seen him at the station before and Ben spends a _lot_ of time at the station (and the bail office and the court and sometimes even at the Met, if his dad’s really got ahead of himself). His dad likes to keep a check on new police officers because there’s a strong chance, a definite chance, that they’re going to have dealings with them in the future. Ben’s going to have to give him a description, one beyond _well, Dad, he was my exact type. You should have seen the size of his hands_. He sighs, and the new officer looks at him. 

He really does have a kind face. Soft eyes, gentle at the edges. Ben raises his eyebrows, watches the guy flush a little and then stops himself looking back.

\---

The guy’s name is Callum Highway. One of his dad’s contacts finds out. He’s a CSO, not a police officer, because apparently he can never pass the assessment. The contact says he was in the army, like this somehow accounts for the failed assessments. Not cut out for the job and so won’t give them any trouble. His dad doesn’t give him a second thought. Ben shouldn’t either.

He looks slightly more rumpled when Ben’s next at the station. Ben wonders if there’s been another assessment that didn’t go well. He wants to reach out and pat his shoulder, say something reassuring, but Callum Highway looks like every good thing that Ben has ever wanted, like he would fall to pieces under Ben’s hand.

He’s waiting for Jay, which is unusual, because Jay is normally far too careful to get himself caught. The catching never lasts for long, not with the amount of solicitors on his dad’s payroll, and he doesn’t really need to go down and wait but he thinks it’s important to have someone there, to know that you were missed for the twenty minutes that East London’s finest tried to pin charges on you that they knew wouldn’t stick, to know someone cared about your whereabouts.

His dad says this makes him soft. And then he says _kindness is a weakness_ , like he always does. If there was a Mitchell coat of arms that would be on it, their family motto: _kindness is a weakness_. His dad despises softness, gentleness, selflessness in all its forms. Ben doesn’t want to know what he’d make of Callum Highway, who has currently folded all of his six foot plus frame down to kneel beside an elderly lady (something stolen, Ben guesses, she has an iron grip on her handbag), brow furrowed, one hand respectfully clasping both of hers. Ben can hear his dad, somewhere, wheezing like he’s carrying the weight of several planets on his back, saying _what a mug_ like he usually does when he witnesses acts of compassion. 

Jay reappears, saunters towards Ben and immediately says, “What are you waiting for?”

“You,” Ben replies. “Got yourself caught, didn’t you? You’re slacking.”

“I was showing you all up, just needed to even things out. It’s been a while since I’ve been in here.” Jay surveys the waiting area and then notices Callum, who is now saying something to the lady with the handbag. Ben can’t catch the words, just the mellow tone of his voice. “Lots of new faces.” Jay looks at Callum and then, pointedly, back at Ben. “New talent.”

“Yeah, alright. I won’t wait for you again.”

Jay grins. “You will. You always will.” He saves the question he obviously wants to ask until they’re outside, walking back through the market. “Who was that then?”

“Who?”

Jay is incredulous. “ _Mate_.”

“He’s the new copper, the CSO. The one Dad asked about.”

“That’s going to be interesting for you, isn’t it?”

“Is it? Why?”

“Ben,” Jay says. “He looks like someone made him, just for you, and then delivered him to Walford as a surprise.”

“I hate surprises.”

“You hate lots of things.”

 _I don’t_ , Ben thinks. _Not really_. “I don’t think my dad would be happy with that, do you?”

“Your dad’s not happy with anything.” Jay kicks at a pile of leaves, directing them straight at Ben’s feet. “Don’t keep making yourself miserable to try and make it happen.”

“I don’t make myself miserable.”

Jay snorts. “Whatever. I’m just giving you advice. You don’t have to take it.”

“You don’t have to _give_ it.”

“I care about you,” Jay replies, and instantly grimaces at the completely genuine tone of his voice. They’re not an affectionate family, though Jay is probably the most open of them all. He doesn’t say much, but he’s tactile (all forehead presses and elbow nudges) in a way that no one else is with Ben. “I care about what’s going to happen to you.”

“In terms of what?”

“Being alone.” Jay kicks more leaves, obviously hating this conversation even though he’s the one who started it. “Ending up alone. Ending up like your dad. I don’t want that for you.”

Ben pushes his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, curls his fingers into fists. “I work better alone.”

He thinks, without meaning to, of Callum Highway and his failed police assessments. Does Callum have a person to speak to? Is there someone waiting in a (probably floral and cluttered) flat for him after each failed one? Why does he keep taking them? Why does he want it so badly? 

“No one’s worth the hassle,” he adds, and Jay rolls his eyes dramatically to the sky. “No one ever will be.”

Ben imagines himself, in the floral and cluttered flat, waiting for Callum Highway, with tea or a takeaway, ready to listen as he walks through the door (or maybe not Callum, exactly, just a version of Callum, some tall and gentle eyed person who will open his arms out to Ben like he’s glad he’s there). It’s domestic and sweet and slightly cloudy to Ben’s eyes, like he’s looking into a place that he’s never going to get to.

\---

His dad isn’t happy about Jay being at the station and, as this is obviously Ben’s fault, he gets sent on a money collecting mission that usually one of the lower ranking boys would do. Ben doesn’t protest, even though he hates the ranking system and any sort of job where he might have to throw a punch. He can’t fight. It’s one of the many reasons why he is such a crushing disappointment as a son.

He only gets a small amount of the money, and even that was just what he managed to grab from a safe before he got caught. The safe owner was wearing an ornate wedding ring that leaves a huge scratch down the side of his face. 

He’s still bleeding when he gets back to his dad, who just says, “I should have sent someone else.”

Ben drops the money onto his dad’s desk. “Yeah. You should have done.”

“I keep thinking that you’re going to surprise me one day.” His dad has a voice that sounds like he’s dragging it up from his feet, every word is bitten off halfway with effort. 

“Keep waiting.” Ben shrugs, faked nonchalance. He fakes everything with his dad. “You never know.”

It comes very easy to Ben, being fake, the denying of things that he really wants. It’s easier to think about what he _doesn’t_ want. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, these things with his dad and all of the terrible forms they come in. He doesn’t want to have the reputation that he has. He doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. He doesn’t want to be so tightly wound that, sometimes, he thinks if he reveals anything about himself to anyone, then the thing holding him together will break and he’ll scatter. 

The scratch on his face becomes a bruise that smudges a purple stripe from his eye to his chin. When he’s next at the station (not Jay this time, some nameless lower-down person) a police officer that he knows fairly well, by sight alone, laughs and says _your dad’s actually letting you get your hands dirty?_ like the idea is ridiculous. Ben smiles back, even though smiling hurts.

He realises that he’s started looking out for Callum Highway, watching for him in corridors and corners, eavesdropping on officers’ conversations to see if they mention him. He can’t possibly fit in here, Ben thinks, it’s too clinical, too full of bad people (he includes himself in this list), too harsh.

Callum Highway is most often found in the waiting room, like the second time. He seems to select whoever seems the most in need of reassurance and crouches near them, completely folds himself in two so he can get to their level. Ben never hears what he says to them but it always seems to work, they stop crying and set their shoulders. When they do that Callum smiles, face turned into his shirt collar, though it’s a smile Ben can tell isn’t his real one. He wants to see the real one.

There’s a point where Callum Highway notices Ben’s bruise and frowns like he wants to do something about it, mouth set in a flat line, and Ben thinks _no please, don’t speak to me, if you speak to me there’s a chance I’ll speak back and then I’ll never let you leave me ever_. 

It’s followed by a point where Callum Highway seems to notice Ben himself, under the bruise, and his lips quirk slightly on one corner. Ben, not used to being observed, shifts to turn away but Callum moves with him, again very slightly, in a way that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it. 

Ben rubs at his cheek and shrugs, like _it’s nothing really_ , and Callum Highway (still knelt on the floor, almost at Ben’s feet) shrugs back like _it’s something to me_.

\---

He and his dad don’t have many face to face conversations, only when the situation really calls for it. His dad isn’t very expressive but he looks at Ben sometimes as though he isn’t sure where he came from, that there must have been an elaborate baby swap and this Ben (a sickly child who became a precocious teenager who became whoever he is now) cannot be the real Ben, cannot be his real son. It doesn’t _hurt_ Ben exactly, but only in the way that it’s such a constant hurt that he stopped being aware of it. He’s sure, as a teenager, he must have asked _why don’t you love me?_ because he was a very open-hearted teenager, emotional and already with years of pain behind him, _why am I such a disappointment to you?_ but the memory stops somewhere before his dad’s answer.

Keanu, the son who should have been, Phil Mitchell’s golden boy, does the face to face meetings instead. Jay assumes Ben is jealous of Keanu but Ben really has no strong feelings about him whatsoever. Behind the great stubble and chiselled jaw there isn’t really much _of_ Keanu at all. He’s a beautiful personality void. Though, admittedly, he treats Ben with a polite civility when he doesn’t really need to. Keanu could throw Ben into the Thames and his dad wouldn’t question it. 

Keanu says, “Thanks” when Ben hands him the accounts for both the car lot and the Arches, and, “What happened to your face?”

“Money collection.”

Keanu furrows his perfect forehead. “Why are you doing that?”

“I got asked to.”

“You shouldn’t be doing the collections.” Keanu gathers the accounts into one pile, smacks the edges against the table to make it neat. “You can’t fight.”

“Didn’t realise there was so much fighting involved to be honest.”

Keanu laughs. He really is fit, not Ben’s type, but the type who should be advertising expensive jeans or cologne somewhere. Not doing _this_ at all. “Sometimes I think you don’t realise a lot of things about what we do.”

“What we do?”

“The family. The business.”

“We’re not related.”

“As good as.”

Ben lets his voice drip with disdain. “Really?”

Keanu restacks the papers and stands up. “I can tell him not to send you on any more collections. There’s no point. You don’t need to do them.”

“You’d rather keep me out of the way with the cars then, yeah?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Keanu says. “You know I didn’t.”

“Send me on all of them. Not bothered. You only learn to fight by getting _into_ fights, right?”

“Your dad doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

“Yeah. He’s a caring man, my dad. Really invested in my wellbeing.”

Keanu, as he always tends to at the end of their meetings, makes an exasperated noise and throws one hand in the air. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll see you next month. Let me know if you need anything.”

He means it genuinely but Ben still feels he has to say, “From you? I don’t think so,” because he’s not great at responding to genuine expressions of kindness.

\---

The bruise fades, purple into yellow into grey. He gets another one though, above his eyebrow this time, angry and red. Not business related, a misjudgement at a bar in Vauxhall. Jay thinks Ben does these things deliberately, out of self sabotage, the same way that he used to deal with built-up tension by trashing rooms, sweeping things off tables and knocking cabinets over. He and Jay were living together then. Jay had bought paper plates and plastic cutlery, sick of collecting china shards off the floor.

“I don’t self sabotage,” Ben tells him, in a particularly dark corner of the Vic. “It’s nothing.”

Jay is not convinced. “You need to be more careful. With the places you go and the things you say.” He hasn’t said anything directly about the bruise but he’d put his thumb to it and frowned. “Stop winding people up.”

Ben puts his hand to his chest, full of innocence. “Me? Wind people up?”

“Just. Meet someone nice. Go on a proper date. Let someone -”

“We don’t really meet many _nice_ people.”

“I do,” Jay says, surprisingly. “You’ve just got to look for them. Or let someone in.”

“Into what, Jay?”

Jay waves his hand around Ben’s head, then in the general vicinity of his heart. “Into this.”

Callum Highway looks truly saddened by the new bruise. He’s carrying a crying baby, bouncing it up and down as he takes long strides back and forth across the waiting room. He stops mid-step when he sees Ben. The baby wails. 

He’s so tall that Ben has to lean right back in his seat to return his gaze. It gives the unfortunate impression that he’s showing off his bruises, both new and faded, but maybe he is showing them off. Maybe he’s saying really, _this_ , this is me, you can’t still be interested. That’s if Callum Highway is actually interested, but he must be. Ben understands interest, knows what want looks like on someone else’s face. He sees it in the widening of Callum Highway’s eyes.

\---

Ben goes into the shop, and sees (right in front of the pasta, grey suit and blue tie, head tilted to one side as though the selection of pasta is the most important decision he’s ever made) Callum Highway. The reality of him, on the Square, in the Minute Mart of all places, is almost too much, like Callum at the station was some secret thing that Ben was keeping for himself. Ben wants to turn around and walk back out but instead, completely without meaning to, he says, “You _live_ here?”

Callum blinks, looks at his feet and then the ceiling as if to say _what in the shop?_

“The Square,” Ben clarifies. “You live in the Square?” 

He’s had so many imaginary conversations with Callum at this point that he realises he really hasn’t judged the way to start this one, the first real one. Callum looks startled for half a second, and then like something else. He says, “I do.” 

“I haven’t seen you.” 

“I just moved here. I didn’t know I was meant to introduce myself to everyone.” His voice is gentle, as Ben knew it was, knew it would be. 

“Start with me,” Ben says. “I’m the most important.”

Callum laughs and holds his hand out. “Callum Highway.”

His hand completely engulfs Ben’s. “Ben Mitchell.”

“I know who you are.”

Ben gives himself a moment to pretend that this means Callum has been noticing him too, that Callum asked around, wanted to find out what his name was, rather than Callum knowing, as everyone knows, who the Mitchells are and what they do. Someone must have already given him a warning. Ben wonders what they said.

“Of course you do,” he says. “There’s probably a photo of me hanging up at the station.”

“You know where I work.”

“You’ve seen me there,” Ben retorts. We make intense eye contact in the waiting room, he thinks but doesn’t say. You look underneath the bruises. 

Callum doesn’t confirm or deny. They’re still holding hands. The shake actually never happened. Callum rocks back on his heels like he’s about to lead Ben somewhere and Ben tilts forward, ready to be led.

Ben adds, “I’m always there. Same as you. You’re not a copper though.”

Something small collapses behind Callum’s eyes. “No. Trying to be. But no. I’m doing the assessment. I’m just at the station a lot because I’m good at talking to people. Calming them down and that while they’re waiting to be seen.” Callum pauses, looks at their joined hands. “You’re still -“

“You’re always in the waiting area because you’re _calming people down_?” Ben wants to add _who are you_ and then immediately wants to tell Callum to get out of Walford immediately before it corrupts him in some way. “That’s how you spend your time?” 

“I like to help people,” Callum responds. 

“Not everyone can be helped.” 

Callum tilts his head again, the same way he did when trying to choose pasta, like he’s considering something important, but now that something important is Ben. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Then we live in very different worlds.”

“I’d guessed that.” Callum disengages his hand from Ben’s, though Ben makes sure it lingers, that their fingers drag against each other. Makes sure the intent is obvious. Callum swallows audibly. 

Ben doesn’t want to push it any further. He has a tendency to outstay his welcome, or just take things that step too far, and he’s fine with this for the moment: Callum Highway, flushed pink above his light blue tie, glowing under the fluorescent lights of the Minute Mart. Ben can take this and store it away for safekeeping.

“I’ll see you around,” he tells Callum, like a promise.

“Hopefully,” Callum replies, like he’ll make sure of it.

\---

People on the Square tend to react to Ben in one of three ways: avoidance (crossing the road to get away from him, ducking behind market stalls), hostility (mixed with disapproval and possibly the remains of a grudge, he can’t remember the amount of people his family has mistreated at this point) or over the top niceness tinged with fear. The last one is the worst.

Honey still does it, the last one, and she was actually one of them once. She keeps a steady stream of chatter, falling like raindrops, as she packs his shopping, not giving him any chance to reply (and Honey’s one of the few people he’d reply to, he _likes_ her. He misses her from family gatherings). She’s also a terrible gossip, again like most people on the Square, which usually works to his advantage. 

“Have you met the new bloke yet?” Ben asks, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder. “The one who just moved here?”

Honey breaks off from whatever she was saying, focuses her huge Disney princess eyes on him, and says, “You mean Callum? He’s been in a few times, he seems nice. Buys a lot of pasta.”

Ben echoes, “Pasta,” back at her, for some reason. “Yeah, I saw him the other day, and I just -”

“Like to keep a check on who’s new here,” she finishes. 

“If you want to put it like that.”

“Be nice to him, he’s not from around here.”

 _Here_ : the Square being an outpost of East London with an unusual amount of organised crime and an incredibly high death count. Once you’re here, you rarely leave. Once you leave, you never return. A group of people in interlinking houses having interlinking relationships, living in each other’s pockets. Ben doesn’t know why anyone would ever choose to move here. 

“I’m always nice,” he tells Honey. “You know that.” 

He remembers the fond way she used to pat his cheek, how she’d chase him out of the kitchen when he tried to steal food before she could serve it, how easy she was to tease. It feels like everyone who is soft with him gets removed from his life, voluntarily or not. 

“I know that,” Honey says. “But, like I said, he’s not from around here. I think he and his fiancee are just going to keep themselves out of -”

Something explodes behind Ben’s ribs. “Fiancee,” he says, too casual to be casual. “Huh.”

“Haven’t met her,” Honey adds.

“ _Her_ ,” Ben repeats. 

Honey, never hugely observant, finally notices his bruised forehead. “I wish you’d keep yourself out of trouble.”

“I try. It just doesn’t always work.”

\---

The pain behind his ribs doesn’t subside. He’s not sure what it could be, his heart is long since broken, but he was possibly building a semblance of hope about Callum, hope which now caves in on itself, hope which should never have existed in the first place because _what did he think was going to happen_ , nothing would ever have happened. He’d said it himself, to Callum’s face, _we live in very different worlds_ , completely different orbits, destined to only bump into each other occasionally and never mix.

He’s not meant to be happy, he thinks. And not in the way that he was happy once and now can’t be again, he’s never really been _happy_ , beyond some fleeting moments. He doesn’t have the capacity for it. Jay had said _I don’t want that for you_ but Ben can’t see that there’s any other way of his life going. Maybe he’ll look back at the end of it and wonder how he let it happen, this absence of love, why he didn’t stop himself.

“Someone’s introspective,” Jay points out.

“Someone’s using big words.”

Jay grins. “Only on special occasions. What’s up?”

Ben says, “The usual,” which could mean anything. “Callum’s moved to the Square.”

“Who’s Callum?”

“The CSO.”

“The one that looks like you dreamt him?”

Jay can be incredibly poetic when he wants to be. Ben blinks. “Yeah, that one.” 

“That’s good, right? You won’t have to hang around the station and stare at him. You can stare at him here, from the comfort of your local.”

“He’s got a fiancee,” Ben says. “And I thought.”

“You thought what?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Jay gives him a long look. “I’m thinking of getting out.”

Ben is about to say _of what_ but he knows Jay well enough to understand what he’s trying to convey. “Of the business?”

“It’s not a business, Ben. Why does everyone call it that?”

“What would you prefer? Phil’s Mitchell’s Organised Crime and Money Racketeering Emporium?”

“Lola says,” Jay begins, and stops. Lola being his girlfriend, a tiny ball of peroxide blonde fury who wants Jay to make something of himself. Of his life. Ben likes Lola almost as much as Lola hates him, which is a lot. “She says that the whole thing’s going to crash down at some point and I shouldn’t wait for that to happen. That I should get a legitimate job.”

“What’s a legitimate job?”

“Ben,” Jay says. “I won’t leave if you’re still in.” 

“Don’t sacrifice yourself on my account.”

“ _Ben_ ,” Jay says, again. “Why do you always do this?”

“I’m not doing anything. You want to go, then go.” He doesn’t mean it. Jay, not that he would ever say it outloud, is the most important person in his life. He can’t imagine him not being around. “Get a proper job. Be happy and domestic.”

“I think,” Jay replies, “that you _thought_ Callum could be something special, and that you _thought_ something was going to happen.”

“Did I?” Ben uses the tone he knows Jay hates, the sarcastic one with a little uplift. _Really, tell me more about what I think_. Jay hates it because he knows what it really means: which is, of course, that Jay is right and Ben just won’t admit it.

\---

The next time he sees Callum he’s jogging (Callum that is, not Ben. Ben doesn’t run, not even when chased), wearing a soft grey hoodie and leggings. Ben has to look elsewhere, up to the sky, because why is this happening, why is he being tested in this way.

A strand of hair has fallen from Callum’s fringe, a flick in the middle of his forehead. He says, “Ben” like he’s been saying it a few times already but Ben had just zoned out. There are tiny beads of sweat on his skin. “Ben.”

Ben returns to reality. “Yeah?”

Having gotten his attention Callum suddenly seems at a loss of what to say. He rubs his hand over his head and just _looks_ at Ben (in a way that no one looks at him). “We’re having a party,” he finally manages. “Next weekend.”

Ben says “We?” for no other reason than to be awkward. He knows, obviously who _we_ is, he just wants Callum to say it. 

“Me and my….” Callum trails off. “It’s an engagement party.”

So a new fiancee. New enough for Callum to avoid using the word. New enough to only now be having the party. “I’d heard about that.”

“The party?”

“No, your fiancee.”

“You’ve been asking about me?” Callum sounds both pleased and confused by the fact that he’s pleased. He tilts his head to one side, a considering gesture that Ben is coming to recognise. 

Ben pushes his hands into the pockets of his coat. “You sure you want me there? I don’t get invited to parties.”

“As long as you don’t cause any trouble.”

He should say no, it’s not a great idea, he hates parties, he drinks too much (self-destructive Mitchell genes) and that sometimes makes him maudlin and honest. He should say no because he thinks if he walks into Callum’s life, Callum’s flat, the cluttered and floral place he imagines, then he’ll never walk back out. He should say no for a hundred reasons.

He says, “Yeah. Okay.”

Callum brightens, dazzling for someone who was already fairly bright. “Next Saturday, starts at eight. It’s the flat above the undertakers.”

That hits Ben like a train, so much that he has to twist his hands into fists and dig his fingernails deep into his palms. He takes a step back, away from the words, and Callum takes a step forward. “I know it,” he manages, like he doesn’t know anything at all. “I knew - I knew someone who used to live there.”

Callum looks like he knows this is a story which doesn’t have a good ending. “We haven’t - it probably looks exactly the same. We haven’t decorated at all.”

So, cluttered and floral. Shades of pink where nothing matches. A place that Ben would complain about, the impact on his eyes, the too-muchness, and also a place he dreams about most nights. He cannot go to this party.

“I’ll be there,” he says, weakly. “Next Saturday.” 

Callum grins, though it’s uncertain. Even when smiling the corners of his mouth don’t quite turn up.

\---

His life with Paul, if it was a _life_ at all, seems like something that happened to someone else. Sure, Ben remembers being there, he remembers people telling him how happy he seemed in the way that you speak to a person who you’ve never seen happy, he remembers the flat and how badly he wanted to decorate it _please I can’t deal with this much floral_ and that he’d actually planned to decorate at some point in the future because it felt like there was a future, and he had all the time in the time in the world in which to do it.

But he remembers in an abstract way that doesn’t include Paul at all, he actively tries to forget how Paul used to speak, the way he’d looked at certain points of the day (mornings being Ben’s favourite, when every curl on his head stood in a different direction and he would be sweet and pilant in the dusky pink of the flat and he would say -), how he had made Ben feel at every point of the day, at every second of his existence, how much Ben had loved him. To recall all of those things is too painful. 

“I need you to go to a party with me,” he tells Jay, not requesting at all.

Jay says, “A _party_? You? Someone invited you to a party?” He looks all around the Vic as if trying to find the culprit. “Really?”

“Callum did. It’s his engagement party.”

Jay looks like he thinks this is a monumentally bad idea. “I don’t think - You want to go? Really? If you want to go out, _we_ can go out. I’ll go wherever you want. Within reason.”

“I want to go.”

Jay raises his bottle to his mouth. “When is it?”

“Next Saturday. Flat over the undertakers.”

Jay chokes on his beer, coughs for at least thirty seconds before managing, “That flat? _Paul’s_ flat? I really don’t -”

Ben says, “Please,” which he says so rarely that Jay just stares at him. “He asked me to go. I want -”

Jay shakes his head. “I _know_ what you want, that’s why I think it’s a bad idea.” But, because Jay is his brother, because Jay has always been there, he reaches out and pats awkwardly at Ben’s wrist. “I’ll go.”

Ben thinks sometimes that he had carved out a part of himself to make room for Paul and now that Paul is gone there’s a space in his chest that he hasn’t filled back up. He covered the remains of Paul’s tattoo with a ring so big that it was obviously hiding something; he’d wanted it to be so, wanted it to catch on the light in an accusatory way, it reminded him to forget about things. _You were happy once_ , the ring says, every time he bangs it against a tabletop or against a pint glass, _remember. You never will be again_.

\---

Jay tries to stop him from buying vodka, it doesn’t mix well he says, vodka and the Mitchells, you know this. Ben does know this, of course he does, and buys it anyway, walks up the stairs to Paul’s flat with the bottle cradled in his elbow like it’s something precious (rather than a thing that he’s wrestled out of his dad’s hands far too many times).

Jay stops them at the door. “You need to tell me what’s going on here. With you and him.”

“Nothing. I already said that.”

“But you want there to be.”

“He’s engaged,” Ben says. “To a woman. I haven’t got time to get involved in all of that.”

“Interesting that you said that instead of he doesn’t like you or he’s not interested.”

“I don’t know if he’s interested, we’ve spoken twice.” 

Callum meets his eyes when they walk in, instantly, in a way that couldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been watching the door and waiting for Ben to arrive. Jay mumbles _not interested_ and huffs incredulously in Ben’s ear. He tries to remove the vodka but Ben holds on in the way that only Mitchells can cling to alcohol. 

“Ben,” Callum says, having apparently crossed the room in two steps. “You’re here.”

“You asked me to be.” 

The bluntness of that makes Callum flush. Jay, who has always had better manners than Ben, is better than Ben in all ways, adds, “I’m Jay. Thanks for inviting us,” even though he hadn’t actually been invited at all. 

The fiancee appears and Ben recognises her immediately from the market. Her stall sells clothes covered with sequins and huge prints, and unnaturally silver costume jewelry. She looks like she’s wearing most of her stock right now, every part of her catches the light, glittering in the crimson of her hair and the glass-blue of her eyes. She’s pretty, Ben always thought so, if you’re into that kind of thing (that kind of thing being girls in general, which he obviously isn’t).

“Whit,” Jay says, obviously grateful to see someone who knows. He thrusts the cheap bottle of rose they’d bought in the Minute Mart at her. “Congratulations.” She hasn’t been introduced as the fiancee but somehow it’s obvious. 

Whitney smiles and takes the wine from Jay’s hand. “Thanks.” 

She half-reaches for the vodka too, but Ben curls it further into his chest so she styles the movement out and places her hand on Callum’s forearm instead. Her fingernails are the same colour as her hair. Ben watches her arch her eyebrows at Callum, the obvious question in the gesture, _you invited Ben Mitchell_, and watches Callum lean away from her.

Ben finally looks around the flat and Callum’s right, they haven’t decorated at all, which is amazing to Ben. Even without the emotional attachment he would have completely stripped the place clean. It’s truly awful. The varying shades of pink, the florals, the hexagon wallpaper, everything is picked not to match or to clash horribly. Ben knows every millimeter of it (he’s had breakfasts and dinners at that table, been pressed against almost every surface), he’d felt at home here. Once. Almost.

He takes a long drink of the vodka. The burn of it moving down his throat at least makes him stop staring at that one patch of wall on the way to Paul’s bedroom. Callum and Whitney’s bedroom now, probably. 

Callum says, “Do you want a mixer for that? We’ve got -”

Ben shakes his head. 

Whitney sparkles from the hoops at her ears, the embellishments on her dress, the rings on her fingers. Callum is blinding, always to Ben, lit up from the inside. The two of them combined are too much for him to look at,, the flat itself is too much for him to bear. He waits until they’ve moved away, doesn’t focus on how Callum lingers like he doesn’t want to go, and tells Jay, “This was a bad idea.”

“I said it was. You never listen to me.” Jay pulls a can of beer off a six-pack that’s standing on the kitchen counter and drops his voice. “You said you didn’t know if he was interested.”

“I don’t.”

“I’ve just met him five seconds ago and I can tell you that he is. What are you playing at?”

“Nothing. I’m not going to do anything, he’s engaged, I told you I -”

“I don’t mean that. I mean why did you come here just to torture yourself with this.” Jay nods to Callum and Whitney, nods to the whole flat in general. “Why do you do this to yourself? Are you trying to punish yourself for something?”

“I don’t know,” Ben replies, helplessly. 

“I don’t know why you do anything.” Jay looks at the vodka, then at Ben. “You’re just gonna get royally drunk, aren’t you?”

Ben, at least a quarter of the way there already, fingertips tingling, says, “Yes.”

Jay sighs. “Well, come and find me when you’re ready to be carried home.”

\---

He ends up in Paul’s bedroom, which is inevitable. He has never been in this flat without ending up in that bedroom, even steps to the side when he stumbles through the door, leaving room for another person to pass (to spin him around, to push him back against the door and say -). It looks more different than anywhere else; there’s make-up and clothes and perfume bottles, a new duvet cover, a mirror, fairy lights around the headboard, all Whitney, he supposes. There’s no sign of Callum anywhere, not that Ben knows Callum well enough to establish what would be a sign of him, but he still feels that he’d recognise something as being _his_.

He’s glad that the room is different. Or maybe he’s not glad at all. Maybe he’d wanted it to be the same. Maybe that’s the whole reason why he’s here. Why does he call it Paul’s bedroom when he’d spent so much time here himself? It was _his_ room too, at one point, the same way that the flat had been. The same way Paul had been. He’d had so much and lost it all. He is incapable of keeping hold of anything. As soon as he has something precious he either throws it away or clings on too hard, turns it to dust from wanting so much.

He lies down on Paul’s bed. Callum and Whitney’s bed. The room is lit only by the fairy lights at the headboard, pink (of course) and outlined with crepe petals. Ben crushes one in his fist, feels the tiny ball of heat in his palm.

Callum, from behind him, says, “Jay thought you’d left.”

Ben opens his hand and watches the petals unfurl, revealing the bead of light at the centre. “Still here. Sorry to disappoint.”

“It’s not disappointing.” Ben turns onto his side, looks at Callum. The vodka bottle is on the floor by the bed, three quarters empty now, and Callum pushes it gently with his foot. “Can I?”

Ben shrugs. “Be my guest.”

Callum sits, leans his back against the bed (Ben wonders just how often he’s going to sit at his feet) and takes a long swig from the bottle. “Thanks.”

“You’re being very polite,” Ben says. “Considering that I’ve basically just walked into your bedroom without being invited.” He isn’t slurring his words, yet, but his defences are down enough that his tone is suggestive. He’s conscious that the words he didn’t say _I was waiting to be invited. I was waiting for you to invite me_ hover in the air between them, as clear as if they’d actually left his mouth.

Callum, predictably, flushes. Ben is starting to love (no, no, just to _notice_ ) that flush, the way it blooms over his cheeks and how he ducks his chin to try and stop it from spreading further. “It’s okay. It’s not like there’s anything secret in here. I trust you.”

“ _Do_ you? That’s not very bright of you.”

“You haven’t given me any reason not to.”

“No,” Ben agrees. “Not yet.”

Callum turns to look at him. Ben looks at the ceiling to avoid the attempted eye contact. “You don’t think much of yourself, do you?”

“Shouldn’t you be practising vows or something? Rehearsing your first dance? Or whatever you’re meant to do for wedding prep, I wouldn’t know.”

Callum takes another swig of the vodka. “I should be. Whit wants to write our own vows. It’s supposed to be all life changing and amazing, but I can’t think of anything. I’m looking stuff up and it’s all about being two halves of a whole and finding your missing piece. You know?”

Ben says, “I don’t know. _All_ of my pieces are missing.”

Callum looks deeply saddened and, for a split second, like he might reach out (to do what, Ben isn’t sure), leans in and then back. “Who lived here before us?”

“Someone I knew.”

“Someone you knew,” Callum repeats. “Is that why you came in here?”

“Just wanted some peace.” Ben pushes himself up on his elbows. “Doesn’t explain why you’re here though. It’s your engagement party.”

“Yeah,” Callum replies. “It is.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Ben begins, watching something flicker over Callum’s face, realising that he’s waiting for Ben to say _about you_. “About you helping people in waiting rooms.”

“You do the same thing,” Callum interrupts. The hopeful expression is gone. Ben may have imagined it. “Don’t you? You’re never there for yourself, you’re always waiting for other people to be let out. Why do you do that?”

“Why do _you_?”

“I told you, I like to help people.”

“I suppose I just want people to know they haven’t been forgotten about.”

“You think people forget about you?”

“I didn’t mean me.” Ben tries very hard to smile. “I’m unforgettable.”

Callum doesn’t deny this at all, doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise. “Where do you get all your bruises from?”

“Various places. You asked about me, someone must have said. There’s no need to be -”

“I didn’t ask about you. Not at first anyway. A blonde woman came up to me in the cafe and said you were bad news. That your whole family was. Said I should stay out of your way.”

Ben’s brain is stuck on _not at first_. When else, he wants to ask, what other times did you ask about me? How did you ask? What did you want to know? “That was probably Sharon.”

“Not your biggest fan.”

“She was my mother once. Sort of. And you didn’t exactly stay out of my way, you invited me into your flat.”

“You’ve already been in here.”

“Yeah.” Ben runs his thumb over his ring, watches Callum watch him do it. “I have.”

“I should be able to think of something,” Callum says. “For my vows. If you’re engaged you should be able to write what you love about them. I shouldn’t be having to think this much about it.”

“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way.”

“There’s definitely a wrong way. I’m doing it.”

Ben thinks that the only possible way to be doing this wrong (being engaged, living in a horribly decorated flat with your pretty fiancee, having a party for your neighbours for the sole purpose of showing how happy you are) is if you’re not in love with the pretty fiancee at all. In a rare show of tact, considering the amount of alcohol he’s consumed, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know Callum well enough to drop that kind of information. But he wants to know him. He _wants_ it so badly. 

“If you want someone to talk to -” he begins, and Callum looks at him again, with more hope than before, more need, so much that he has to start over. “If you ever just want to talk about it with someone -”

“You want to talk to me about wedding planning?”

“I want to talk to you about anything.”

Callum huffs a small laugh, like he isn’t sure if he’s being made fun of, but he must see something in Ben that makes him stop. Ben wonders, for a horrible second, what he looks like right now, as he stares at Callum. He can be very obvious sometimes, it happens when you try so hard to stop yourself feeling things, the feelings themselves become too much to keep hold of. It’s probably written all over his face as he sits here, on Callum’s bed, haloed by pink fairy lights. 

Callum says, “I think that would be alright.”

“ _Alright_?”

“I mean. I’d like that.”

Ben says, “Yeah?” and doesn’t bother not to sound like he’s flirting, like he’s asking for something more.

Callum nods. “Yeah.” 

“Then it can be arranged.” Ben reaches out, Callum instinctively extends his hand. “No, your phone. Give me your phone.” Callum does. 

Ben debates how to enter himself into Callum’s small contact list. Guy You Stare At In Police Stations. Guy You Found In Your Bedroom During Your Engagement Party. Guy Who Shook Your Hand For An Awkwardly Long Time In The Minute Mart. He goes with just “Ben”, right at the top of the list like he’s demanding Callum’s attention. Like every letter is saying _I’m here, notice me_. He passes the phone back.

Callum looks expectant. “What, you don’t want mine?”

“I’ll have it when you message me,” Ben says, full emphasis on the _when_. He feels pride in watching Callum flush again, but maybe Callum’s been flushed for this whole conversation. “You need to go back. Whitney’ll send a search party.”

“If you want me to leave -“

“I don’t,” Ben clarifies. “I’m just saying that you should.” 

Callum stands up in a very ungraceful way, exactly as he does at the station, slowly unbending himself to full height. “You staying here? You can, if you still need peace.” He touches Ben’s ankle, as if he couldn’t help it, thumb curled to bone. “I can tell Jay -“

Ben stares at him and he knows what his expression must be doing now. He can tell from the way Callum looks back at him.

\---

He doesn’t stay. He finds Jay, at the centre of a group of people he only knows by sight (Jay has always been better at parties, better with people in general), and says, “I’m leaving,” as if he has achieved what he came here to do. Maybe he has.

Jay looks pleasantly surprised to see he’s not _that_ drunk. “You want me to come with you?”

Ben says, “No, I’m alright,” and scuffs his knuckles across the back of Jay’s head, just to make the point.

Callum walks him to the door, even though it’s really only ten steps, bedroom to front door, that Ben could have managed on his own. Callum’s hand flutters around Ben’s back, then his shoulders when Ben turns to face him. “Thanks for coming,” Callum says, whispers it, like the words are a secret. “I know it couldn’t have been easy coming back in -”

“You should decorate,” Ben replies, surprised to find that he’s whispering back. “Make it more yours.” He’s left Whitney out of the equation completely.

“You don’t like it?” Callum’s hand finally settles to a stop on Ben’s upper arm. 

Ben leans into the weight of it. “No, I like it too much.”

He leaves Callum still standing there, flush reflecting too many shades of pink, his fingers curled like they’re still clasping the material of Ben’s shirt.

\---

Being alone on the Square is somehow worse than being alone anywhere else. The interconnecting houses, all with too many people in them, all of those people interconnected to everyone else, all the intertwined family trees, the relationships (hidden or otherwise), the loves, the deaths, the secrets. They all move around Ben, the Square itself buzzes with life while he sits in the centre.

He does more debt collecting, for no other reason than Keanu told him he didn’t have to. He’s always liked being contrary. The best way to make him do anything is to imply that it’s not a good idea. Maybe that had been Keanu’s plan all along but that’s unlikely. Ben doesn’t think Keanu is capable of forming a plan. But, then neither is he. He’s not patient enough, isn’t considerate. His debt collecting involves rushing into places, demanding, losing control of situations, not being able to keep calm. He gets bruises on his face, his ribs, his knuckles, things thrown at him, jumps from a first storey window and lands heavily on his ankle.

His dad texts, no concern, doesn’t ask him to stop, just _what are you trying to prove?_ and Ben thinks _myself, to you_. 

When Callum finally texts Ben has a huge crimson bruise curved around his cheek. It looks like someone has cupped his face in their hand and left the mark behind. Callum says _STILL UP FOR THAT TALK_ because of course he texts in all caps. Ben is limping past the laundrette when the message comes through, still not able to put his weight on his left foot, and catches sight of his own reflection: bruised, damaged, a gun hidden in his inside pocket, an envelope full of stolen money in his outside pocket. It’s like a comic strip, where his panel is black and white, full of smudges and rain clouds, while Callum’s is warm and soft, like a watercolour, catching the light in every possible way. Ben can’t cross into Callum’s panel, he knows he’ll take the smudges and the bruises with him. 

_THIS IS CALLUM_ Callum adds, shouting via text even though Ben can’t imagine him ever raising his voice in real life. 

Ben could easily do the cowardly thing and not reply, let Callum think he gave a fake number, but then Callum adds _IT’S OKAY IF YOU’RE BUSY_ because, on top of his various other endearing qualities, he’s also a triple texter. Ben should have known. It’s the _it’s okay if you’re busy_ that finally does it because he can picture Callum frowning at his phone, wondering why there isn’t an immediate reply and adding more words just in case. Giving Ben the perfect excuse to say you’re right, I’m busy, and to leave it. 

Ben cannot leave it.

\---

Callum asks to meet in a pub that’s in completely the opposite direction from the Square. Ben has to take a wrong turn when walking from the station, away from the market, onto the tube, and into some chrome panelled place in the city where Callum is sitting awkwardly on a stool that’s too small for his height. He’s wearing a red tie which he turns the same colour as when Ben says, “What am I, your mistress?”

Callum almost upends the table. “What?” 

“Bringing me all the way out here. There’s a pub on the Square. You ashamed to be seen with me?”

Callum says, “ _No_ ”, very forcefully and, “I don’t know, I just wanted a change of scenery.” He looks like he did while jogging, like now that he’s got Ben’s attention, has managed to capture him up West, he has no idea what to do next. “It’s nothing like that. With you. I’m not -”

“I was joking,” Ben interrupts. “Sorry.” He sits, drags one of the beers already on the table over to him. “I joke when I’m nervous.”

“Why are you nervous?”

Ben shrugs. “You message me, ask me to meet you all the way out here, you’re in a suit. It’s like a job interview. I mean, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had a legitimate job, but -”

Callum pulls at his tie. “Sorry, I’ve been for an assessment, I didn’t think about -”

“Can we both stop saying sorry? It’s fine, I like the tie.” Whenever Ben thinks it’s impossible for Callum to flush anymore he somehow does. “Police assessment?”

Callum replies, “Fourth time,” in a tone that indicates the beginning and end of that conversation. “What happened to you?” He holds his hand out, drifts it in the air around Ben’s right cheek like he can magic the bruise away.

“Work,” Ben says. “You know how it is.”

“I don’t.” Callum looks pained, drops his hand. “Look, I think, at the party, it sounded like I wasn’t - that I don’t want to get married, or that I’m having doubts or something. But, I was drunk and -”

“You weren’t. Neither was I.”

“I don’t want you to think that I'm having second thoughts.”

“It’s really none of my business.”

Callum says, “You,” and stops. “You sorta.” He sounds hopeful and Ben has never been able to deal with hearing hope in peoples’ voices. It hits him in the place his heart should be, the plaintiveness of it. “You sorta implied that you wanted it to be.”

“Did I?” Ben replies, knowing it’s true, he absolutely had implied that. Hadn’t even _implied_ it really. 

He doesn’t expect Callum to pick up on the obviousness of his tone, the way he says one thing and means the opposite. How when he says _did I?_ he actually means that the other person is completely correct. But Callum smiles, the small one to himself, tucked into his shirt collar and says, “I meant to say thank you for listening to me.”

“We listened to each other.”

“Yeah. We did. I just, I don’t have many mates on the Square or anywhere really, and I haven’t been able - it’s going really fast, this whole thing, too fast, and I thought there’d be time to -”

“What thing?” Ben says. “The wedding thing?”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“That’s not really a reason to have a wedding.”

“And Whit’s great,” Callum says. “Isn’t she?”

Ben thinks this is a rhetorical question until he realises that Callum’s stopped speaking and is looking at him, expectantly, waiting for an answer. “I - yeah. I mean, she’s not my type. But girls in general aren’t.”

Something happens in Callum’s eyes. He does that a lot; the flicker of emotion that he immediately suppresses. This one stays longer, his eyes widen and his mouth opens slightly, before he blinks and shakes his head. “I -”

“Come on,” Ben says. “You knew that. It’s the second thing everyone says about me. And I don’t exactly hide it.”

“I think you hide lots of things.”

“Not that. I’m really obvious about that." He’s finished his drink, so has Callum (though Callum has now progressed to tearing the label off the bottle, shredding the paper into little confetti squares. “You want another? One that you’re not going to vandalise?”

Callum nods. Ben pays a small fortune for another round, and returns to him gathering the label remains into a neat pile, before crushing the whole thing beneath his fist. “I think it’s brave,” Callum says. “The way you are.”

Ben frowns. “What?”

“Being honest with yourself. Living the way that you want.”

“I’m not like that with everything.”

“I wish I could be like that.”

“Are you saying that you’re not?”

“I don’t know.”

Ben has a sudden urge to touch him; maybe to cover his fist with his hand, to put his arm around his shoulder, to lie on a sofa with his head in his lap, an urge that becomes a need which turns into a dream. He shouldn’t have come, he should have left it in the police station waiting room where it belonged. As with most things in Ben’s life though, it’s spiralling, he can feel it, the string that binds him together is getting loose. 

“I don’t know what you’re telling me,” Ben finally manages. “Or what you want me to say back.”

“I’m sorry,” Callum says. “I didn’t mean to - It’s been a long day and I should -”

“The assessment?”

“It’s never gonna happen. They just feel sorry for me at this point I think. I’m not the right personality to be a copper, and I think they’re waiting for me to realise it.”

“As someone with a lot of experience with coppers, I think you’d be decent. But the thing is, not many of them are decent. And I don’t know if you’d find that hard. All the power struggles and the conflict and -”

“I know about that, I was in the army.”

Ben doesn’t mean to sound as surprised as he does when he says, “The _army_?” but he has no idea how Callum continues to interject himself into roles that aren’t suited for someone as soft, as gentle, as sincere as he is. “The army. Why do you do these things?”

“What things?”

“You don’t seem like someone who would be a copper. Or someone who would be in the army.”

“I told you, I like to help -”

“Then be a counsellor,” Ben says. “That’s my career advice. From someone without a career. Surround yourself with people as nice as you are.”

“You think I’m nice?”

“I think lots of things.” 

They finish the drinks in silence, but not an uncomfortable one. It’s what Ben supposes would be a companionable silence, a peacefulness from being with someone you’re comfortable with, but he wouldn’t know. Jay says that he doesn’t shut up enough to ever experience it. 

When they leave Callum makes some weak excuse about needing to go into town and so not back to the Tube with Ben. Ben doesn’t push it, Callum seems overwhelmed (still pulling at his tie and still slightly flushed), but he hesitates outside the pub, not sure what the correct process is on how to end this. He goes with, “I’ll see you around?”

Callum says, “Yeah,” a certainty and lifts his hand.

Ben expecting a handshake, makes sense, suitably blokey and what mates do after drinks, he’ll probably clap Callum on the back too just to sell it, lifts his hand too.

Except Callum touches Ben’s face, tentatively opens his hand over the bruise so that his fingertips are exactly where it starts and ends, his thumb almost at the corner of Ben’s mouth. He says, “I hate seeing you with bruises,” and curls his fingers slightly, like Ben is something precious, something he wants to keep safe. 

Ben says, “I get a lot of them.”

“I know. Be more careful, yeah?” Callum pulls his hand away. “I’ll see you.”

\---

His dad asks to see him (he seems to only see his dad through pre-arranged appointments) and he’s surprised when he arrives at the house to find Sharon there. Surprised and actually not surprised. It must be one of the months where she and his dad are back on, before it all explodes again. They go through stages, on and off and back on again, stages that last weeks or months (or years in one case) before it all explodes and there’s an epically tempestuous break-up where Sharon totters around the Square warning people off the Mitchells and Ben has to fill all the vodka bottles in his dad’s kitchen with water.

He liked Sharon. She was the closest thing to a mother he’d ever had (his real mother having disappeared, run away from his dad and tried to take Ben with her, a plan that failed). He’d liked her kindness, how she’d encouraged him to talk, looking up at him from under her blonde fringe and trying to get him to open up (not that it ever worked), how patiently she’d sat through all of his living room dance recitals. Sharon isn’t really that person anymore though, every break-up with his dad had seemed to remove a layer of softness from her until they were just through to the hard shell underneath.

Ben would probably have done that to Paul, eventually. None of them should be trusted with good people.

Ben says, “Sharon,” and watches as she makes him tea. She remembers how he likes it.

Sharon says, “Ben” and, because they always ended up being allies against his dad somehow, “He’s not in a good mood.”

“Is he ever?” Ben leans back against the kitchen counter. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

“You know how it is.”

“I do,” Ben agrees. “But weren’t you just warning people off me in the cafe a few weeks ago?”

“I warn a lot of people off you Ben, be more specific.” Sharon pours the tea. “But you’re probably talking about the CSO. The sweet looking one.”

Ben tilts his head to the side, almost a nod.

“You work fast,” Sharon observes. “Thought he was engaged.”

“He is. It’s not like that.”

“You’re just bothered what he thinks of you.” Sharon hands the mug to him. “Your dad’s in the front room.”

More accurately, his dad is pacing up and down the front room. Ben has try and step around him to get to the sofa and they do an awkward back and forth dance before his dad huffs and says, “Ben, just sit down,” already annoyed. He reaches for Ben’s face and pats his chin to the left, surveys the various colours of Ben’s cheek. “State of you.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“It would be nice,” his dad says, “If you were busy with the things I actually want you to do.”

Ben, not used to his dad wanting him in any way, is annoyed by the instant hope in his voice. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve got a business opportunity.”

“For _me_?”

“Why is that so surprising to you?”

“Because you never ask me to do anything. You just stick me with the cars and forget I’m there, I keep trying to -”

His dad points to his face. “That’s to get my attention then?”

“Not everything I do is to get your attention.”

His dad sighs, the same way he always does, like he’s very slowly deflating in Ben’s presence. “You can say no to this. I can ask Keanu. It’s not exactly your usual line.”

Ben, aware that he’s being played, that the Keanu comment was purely to make him angry, bristles anyway. “I can do it.” 

“It’s not standard money lending stuff, it’s more -”

“Dad. I can do it,” Ben says, handing him the victory. 

“You remember Danny Hardcastle,” his dad says and continues anyway, Ben’s answer isn’t important. “He’s got work for me. Different sort from what we usually do but it’ll make money. We need you - _I_ need you to get into the undertakers and get some records.”

Ben waits. His dad pats at his knees, conversation already over. “That’s all I’m getting?”

“Will you do it or not?”

It’s pointless asking. He’s never said no to his dad once in his life, he’s still always running behind him, tripping over his own feet, saying _look at me, watch me, look what I’m doing_ while his dad keeps staring forward. It’s obviously a bad job, hence why Keanu hasn’t been asked, or maybe Keanu is being kept with the more upscale stuff, Ben’s the one who can break into undertakers and steal personal details. Ben’s the one who won’t get invited to whatever champagne reception his dad holds when jobs go well. Ben’s the one always with his face pressed against the glass waiting to be invited in, waiting to be told _well done_ or _good job_ or, most wished for of all, _I’m proud of you_.

“I’ll do it,” he says.

His dad nods, in the way you would to a kid who’s made a mistake, once to Ben and then once to the door. Dismissed.

\---

Ben has been told, repeatedly, that he doesn’t have a conscience. He thinks it’s likely to be true, because he’s not sure how he would have made it this long with one; the list of things that he’s done, or the things that he’s caused, is too long. It makes him selfish, makes people grab at him and say things like _poor Ben, you think you’re the only one who’s had a hard life?_ , means that he doesn’t think about Whitney at all. She doesn’t cross his mind, not even as he stood on the South Bank with her fiancee’s hand cupped to his cheek.

After seeing Callum, he is more convinced than ever that Callum doesn’t actually want the wedding to go ahead. He just isn’t sure what Callum wants instead. 

He’s only been to the station a handful of times but he hasn’t seen Callum there. The people of the waiting room go unconsoled. Once Ben tries to speak to an old lady sat next to him, for no other reason than he thinks Callum would appreciate it, but he knows he doesn’t have Callum’s manner. His voice is too harsh and his face is… well, what his face is. She pulls her handbag more tightly into her lap and turns away.

Jay says things with the business are getting worse, going in a direction he doesn’t like. “You remember Danny Hardcastle,” he tells Ben. “You _remember_. All of that stuff about Odessa, that thing in Spain. It’s too big for us. It’s too -” he searches for the right word and lamely ends on, “bad.”

“Bad?” Ben says. “We _are_ bad. We haven’t exactly been rescuing orphans or saving kittens from trees.”

Jay (who is an orphan, Ben curses himself for never thinking before he speaks) shifts in his seat. “Just saying it’s one thing to nick a few cars or collect a few loans, it’s another thing to be getting involved with -”

“I thought you were getting out.”

“I said I wouldn’t leave until you did.”

“Jay, I’m never leaving. You know that.”

“Your dad can handle himself.” Jay leans back. “I just - You can have your own life, Ben. Outside of this, _away_ from this. It’s gonna go bad. That’s what I’m saying.”

They’re in one of the booths in E20, the ones that always remind Ben of sitting in a green velvet shell. There’s enough bass to drown out any conversations and usually a few nameless suits from out of town that Ben can waste a few hours with. Maybe an entire night. Never the mornings though. Jay moves his hand across the room when he says _this_ , away from _this_.

Ben sighs. “Are you seeing any opportunities for me to go somewhere else? Because, as far as I can tell, it’s not like I’ve got any chance of another kind of life.”

Jay’s hand, still sweeping through the air, lands on Callum, sat in an identical seashell almost directly opposite them. Jay clears his throat. Ben looks and Callum looks back.

“Doesn’t count,” Ben says. “Never gonna count.”

Whitney arrives, Ben assumes from the bar, and sits beside Callum. She sees them and waves, though only Jay waves back. 

“I was at that party.” Jay drops his voice. “And they’re not -- she’s really into him, you can see that, but it’s -”

“It’s none of my business.”

“So you haven’t seen him since?”

Ben stares down at the table. 

“I thought so.” 

“It’s not like that.”

“But it could be?” Jay looks at Whitney. “Like that.”

“It doesn’t matter what -”

“You’re allowed to want things,” Jay says. “You just never pick the easy option. I wish you would sometimes.”

Ben should make a quip here. He usually would, he knows Jay is expecting a _but where would the fun it that be?_ or _but that’s why you keep me around_ , but he feels too tired to do it. He’s aware that Jay is leaving, maybe not immediately but in stages, and at some point he will have removed himself from Ben’s life. Jay has always been scrappier, and doesn’t care about gaining other peoples’ approval because he’d been on his own for so long as a kid before Phil took him in. Before he became Ben’s brother. Jay has always fiercely wanted more, wanted _better_. He has also always wanted those things for Ben.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” Ben tells him. “I don’t remember if I’ve already said that but you don’t. If you think it’s going bad, and you’ve got the chance -”

“It’s not about having the chance, Ben, it’s about just doing it. And I’m going nowhere without you. You’re my brother. I would never -”

“If it goes bad then I’m telling you to go. I’ll make you. You think I want something to happen to you because of me? Lola would murder me, you know she would.”

Callum appears next to him when he goes to the bar for another round. Again, Callum looks like he doesn’t know why he’s approached Ben, as if he’d had no say in standing up and walking over at all. Ben feels Jay staring as he says, “Alright?”

Callum says, “Yeah. You know, just wedding planning.”

“Haven’t seen you at the station much.”

“You’ve been looking for me?”

Ben, in replaying everything Callum says, has noticed that he does that a lot. Makes statements which encourage Ben to reveal an interest, or to confirm things that Callum is already hoping. _You’ve been looking for me? You think I’m nice? You’ve been asking about me?_ on a loop. Ben has dodged all of them so far.

“Yeah,” he tells Callum. “I have.” 

Callum looks dumbstruck. He leans forward, props his elbows on the bar, and says, “Me too.”

“You too what?”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“I’m really easy to find. Plus, you work in a police station, which is where I am most of the time.”

“No, I’ve been looking for you and trying to avoid you at the same time.” 

“Then I can kind of see where you’re going wrong.” Ben should really be walking back to the booth, both his and Jay’s drinks are in front of him, his change is in his hand. “Why are you avoiding me?” He thinks of all the reasons this could be the case; he was too obvious, too forward, went too close to the line, was too much of himself. Or maybe Callum is listening to the Square gossip. “You’re not scared of me, are you?” he asks, thinking _please don’t be_.

Callum says, “Maybe, but not really in a bad way. That’s the problem.”

“I don’t get what you mean.” 

“I’m scared of everything.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Why are you so bothered about me?” 

“Why do you think?” 

Callum inhales, so sharply that Ben can hear each gasp of it in his throat. He mumbles something that might be the start of a word but Ben doesn’t want him to say anything at all. He hadn’t even intended to say anything himself. 

The sound of high heels on wood signal that Whitney, obviously wondering what’s going on, is approaching the bar. Ben, grateful for the excuse to leave, finally picks up his drinks. “I’ll see you,” he tells Callum, though he probably won’t. 

Callum looks back at him, helplessly and accusingly, as if they’d been on a boat together, pretending everything was fine, and Ben’s just thrown him overboard.

\---

Callum texts _What did you mean?_ and the lack of upper case startles Ben. It seems more serious. _At the bar_ Callum clarifies. _I don’t know if I misunderstood_. Ten minutes pass and he adds _I’m probably reading too much into it_. Another five minutes and _You didn’t mean anything by it?_ Another question where he’s leading Ben into an answer.

Ben doesn’t have time for this. Any of it. He can’t reply to Callum because he’s currently breaking into the undertakers, two floors below where Callum and Whitney are probably about to get into their fairy-lit bed (while Callum texts Ben to establish what exactly, whether or not Ben is interested? If Ben has feelings for him? If there’s a chance that Ben -)

Ben cuts off the thought. He doesn’t have interests in anyone, feelings for anyone, and he’d loved someone once (with all the feelings and interest that came with it) and look what happened. He’s good for no one, he always has to spoil things. He’s never had anything special without breaking it. He didn’t have to say anything, he could have left it as it was and carried on giving advice for a wedding that Callum obviously doesn’t want. 

The fact that he couldn’t leave it probably answers all of Callum’s questions and also what Jay had asked, as they walked home from the club, his hand to Ben’s elbow. “Do you like him? I was teasing you a bit before, I didn’t realise that you actually - I thought you were just doing what you usually do. Do you _like_ him?” 

The honest answer, if Ben admits it to himself, is that he doesn’t just _like_ Callum, he _wants_ him. From the moment he saw him in the station waiting room. From the second that Callum looked at him, underneath the bruises. Ben wants all of his goodness and light, all of his softness and gentleness, he wants to always be looked at like he’s a person that deserves to be looked at. He wants Callum waiting for him in every room, he doesn’t want him to get married, he wants to take him far away from the Square but also to stay right here so that he can show his dad that it’s possible for him to be happy. He wants to hear Callum’s voice in the mornings, afternoons, evenings, to have Callum notice things about him, to point out the things he likes. He wants Callum’s hands on him again, to be held like he’s something important. He wants he wants he wants. He cannot have. 

The security in the undertakers is poor. You would think, with the higher than average crime rate in the Square, that they’d invest in some decent cameras or an alarm at least. But, Ben supposes, what kind of immoral person would steal from an undertakers? 

Ben knows why his dad wants the records. There’s only one reason, and it’s a thing that he’d never thought his dad would get involved in. Jay’s right. It _is_ getting too much. It’s crossing lines that shouldn’t be crossed. The padlock on the door looks easy to break, it’s rusty and already feels fragile in Ben’s hand, he probably doesn’t even need the bolt cutters that had been delivered to his flat by some nameless low-in-the-ranks person. 

Low-in-the-ranks had said, “From your dad,” and Ben had been annoyed at himself for expecting that his dad might actually show up in person. Or that there would be a note, a bow around the bolt cutters, a card saying _thank you for doing this_. Keanu probably gets thank yous. Ben may not hate Keanu as a person but he certainly hates how nonchalantly he’d been able to insert himself at the top of the Mitchell hierarchy. How easily Ben’s dad loves him, when Keanu never worked for that love at all, not like Ben does. _That’s why I don’t understand you_ his dad said once, after something, any number of things that Ben had done wrong. _The desperation_. Is it desperate, Ben thinks, to want to be loved?

 _You’re ignoring me?_ Callum says. 

Ben uses the bolt cutters anyway. He’s too distracted by Callum and his inability to send one message like a normal person (or, ideally, no messages at all) to catch the lock as it falls, and it hits the concrete with a loud metallic crack. Ben looks up at the pink tinged glow of the flat windows, but nothing. 

He knows his way around the undertakers. That could be why his dad asked, but that betrays an interest in Ben that his dad doesn’t have. He’d been in here with Paul, would make excuses to drop in because he enjoyed both seeing Paul in a suit and having someone to visit. It seemed beautifully casual and normal to have a boyfriend that you would spend lunch hours with. Ben always acted like he’d never planned it, like he was just passing, _oh I was just around and thought we could_ and Paul would -

Why did he always act as if he was only there accidentally? He would do it at the flat too; would say _I just thought I would stop by_ instead of _I missed you and I wanted to see you_. _I didn’t read your messages_ instead of _I read all of them and they overwhelmed me and I didn’t know how to respond_. _I’ve got some free time_ instead of _I cancelled everything I had on today because I’d rather be with you_. He’s annoyed at his past self, at Paul somehow for not calling him out, at all the different lives he could have had.

He tells Jay _I’m never leaving_ instead of _I’m too scared to leave, where would I go? Who would have me? What other life is there for me? I was almost good, with Paul, I was almost there and now I don’t think I’ll ever be there again. I don’t think I’m capable of being that person anymore. This is all I’m fit for_. 

“What are you doing?” Callum asks.

Ben looks down at his phone, thinking that Callum has somehow progressed to voice messages. 

Callum says, “Ben,” and Ben realises that the sound is actually coming from behind him. In person. 

He turns around, very slowly, because maybe if he delays the movement Callum won’t actually be there. But Callum is. He has bed hair (one side of his fringe completely stuck up, like the crest of a wave), is in a t-shirt and shorts, socks on his feet, and Ben progresses completely past want and into need. He _needs_ this to be some alternate universe where he can say go back to bed babe or something equally affectionate and Callum will say no point without you is there? 

“I heard a noise,” Callum says. “And the door was open, so - And it’s you.”

“It’s me.” Ben nods his head. 

“The lock’s broken.”

“That was also me,” Ben says. “Obviously.”

“But I don’t -”

“Don’t get into denial about this, Callum. You know what I am.” 

Callum shakes his head. “I know _who_ you are.”

“I haven’t got time for a heart to heart right now. And you don’t know anything about me, we went out for a drink once and you just -” Ben presses his free hand to his temple. “Got inside my head.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Just go, Callum, alright? If you’re gonna call the old bill just give me a ten minute head start.” 

“You’re in my head too,” Callum says. 

“I don’t care,” Ben replies, but he does. He cares so much. He cares _deeply_.

“Everything was fine,” Callum continues. “Before I saw you.”

“Don’t put this on me. Everything was obviously _not_ fine.”

“What makes you -”

“Your never-ending police assessments. What, they just let you hang around the station. For what? What are you waiting for? What are you _looking_ for? There’s nothing there -”

“You were there,” Callum interjects.

“And this wedding, what’s even happening with this wedding, Callum? Do you even want to marry her? Because, I’m not exactly a relationship expert but, from where I’m standing -”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Callum says. One of his hands is fisted in the swoop of his hair, the other is held forward. Not towards Ben exactly but reached out like he just wants him to stop talking, or he’s looking for Ben’s mute button. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“See?” Ben shakes his head. “That’s not what you’re meant to say when someone questions your motive for getting married. You’re meant to say that you love her and that she’ll make you happy and you want a life for her, here, in that flat.” He points above, to the ceiling, to a probably blissfully asleep Whitney. “You’re _meant_ to say that she’s who you want and there’s no one else in the world for you.”

“I thought all of that.”

“You _thought_.” 

“I didn’t think there was anyone in the world for me.”

“Until you met Whitney,” Ben prompts. 

Callum doesn’t say anything. His hand, still held forward, shakes and Ben realises that his own hands are shaking too. Maybe they’ve been shaking this entire time. His knuckles around the bolt cutters are white with the effort of holding on. Holding himself together. Callum takes a step forward. Ben takes a step back. 

“I’m in the middle of something,” he tells Callum. “I told you. Just say if you’re calling the police or not and then just go. Please.” 

Callum asks, “What are you doing?” which any normal person would have asked first. 

“Something for my dad.”

“What could you want from an undertakers?”

“Records,” Ben says, without meaning to. The true answer, which is always held somewhere in his throat, never to be said, finally comes out. “Personal records. For -” he vaguely gestures with the bolt cutters, trying for the politest possible phrase. “Deceased people.”

Callum frowns. “What for?”

“To be reused.”

Callum’s frown turns into a grimace.

Ben says, “This is me, Callum. This.” He holds his arms out, a kid at the end of one of his living room dance recitals, telling his dad to _look at me_. “I told you. We’re from completely different places. You’re too good for me, just being around me is probably corrupting you in some way.” 

“This isn’t you, though. You said you’re doing it for your dad and I get - I know who your dad is, but you don’t have to - you’re better than this -”

“Are you calling the police or not.” Ben’s voice is louder than it should be. He’s grateful for the almost constant noise that seems to float around the Square (sirens, far off arguments, the slamming of unseen doors). His raised voice is just an addition to several already raised voices. “Just do it and go.” 

Callum lifts up his hands placatingly, like Ben is the copper and he’s about to arrest him. “I’m not too good for you. Don’t say that. You’re more than you -”

“Are you calling -”

“No,” Callum says. “I’m not.”

He leaves and Ben trashes the room, in a way he hasn’t done for months. He up-ends a table and pulls over two cabinets, throws papers everywhere while he’s retrieving the records then stands in the midst of the destruction and knows it hasn’t worked. It never did. He would break things to try and stop breaking himself, or to avoid any part of him cracking, and he would still end up hurt anyway. That’s just what he is. 

He throws the bolt cutters in the canal, watches them sink and texts his dad. He doesn’t get a reply, no thank you, no good job. He’s annoyed at himself for expecting one. For always thinking that this time will be the one, this is when his dad will say _I’m proud of you. I see you_. 

It’s not until he’s at home that he realises Callum actually had said the second thing. He’d said I know _who_ you are. It had sounded like something he was just realising, but also like something he’d always known.

\---

“You didn’t have to destroy the place,” Keanu says. His expression is so bland that Ben can’t tell if he’s impressed or annoyed by this. “It was supposed to be easy.”

“I like to make things more interesting.”

“That’s you all over,” Keanu replies. “Making things interesting.”

“Oh!” Ben places his hands to his cheeks. “Was that a compliment? I didn’t know you cared.”

“No. It definitely wasn’t. And I don’t. You just don’t have to act up all the time. Someone could have caught you.”

“Would anyone have really been bothered if they had? I can’t see you or my dad rushing to the station to bail me out.”

“We probably would have done it eventually.”

“Wow,” Ben says. “Thanks.” He draws the word out as long as he can, just to wring every last drop of sarcasm from it. 

“I don’t know why everything with you has to be so difficult.”

“It’s a gift.” Ben gestures to himself, _it’s me, I’m the gift_. “Being difficult.”

Keanu takes the records and is halfway out of the door before he adds, “A word of advice,” because Keanu has to signpost things before he says them sometimes. His monotone voice doesn’t always make his intention obvious. “If you’re serious about making something of yourself in this -”

“Making something of myself?” Ben echoes. 

“In the business.”

“This business?” Ben stares at the files in Keanu’s hands, the identities that his dad is going to use for who knows what, why would he even tell Ben anyway. “What would I be making of myself exactly? What would I be making myself into?”

“Your dad,” Keanu replies. He looks vaguely confused, narrows his eyes at Ben. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Ben can only stare back at him. The fact that Keanu, _Keanu_ who Ben didn’t think was capable of actually forming independent opinions, is the first person in years to ask what he wants, what he’s actually aiming for, is too much. Likewise is the idea that Keanu thinks Ben wants to be like his dad. 

He leaves the pause for too long. Keanu says, “Fine, I don’t care. I’m just telling you. Your dad’s going to lose patience with you.”

“My dad lost patience with me twenty-four years ago.”

Keanu’s brow furrows. “But you _are_ twenty-four.”

Ben resists the urge to slap his palm across Keanu’s perfect face. “Exactly.”

\---

Jay leaves.

Ben was expecting it. He never even considered that Jay would pick him over Lola, Ben has never been picked over anyone, and Jay had really stayed for too long when he could have moved on (away from Ben) at any time. 

“It’s not about picking anyone over anyone,” Jay says. “And I’m not going far. I’ll come back all the time, you know that. We can go for a pint every Friday. And Saturday, if you want.”

Jay’s going on the Tube. People who leave the Square via the Tube rarely come back. It’s almost as bad as if he was leaving in a black cab (those have a degree of finality that mean Jay wouldn’t be seen again for years). 

He had been intimidated by Jay, in the beginning, because Jay had been dropped into his life with no explanation and remains the only person that his dad apparently just took a sudden liking to and decided to adopt. One morning Jay was just there, looking like he might run away any second, and his dad had said _this is Jay, he lives with us now_. Later his dad said _think of him as your brother_. Ben, being the fragile yet stubborn child he was, had thought _I will not_, because Jay had been selected. Picked off the street because Phil Mitchell thought he might be a better version of a son. But it had never ended up like that. There might not ever be anyone in the world who can handle him like Jay does.

Ben hugs him and tries to make it blokey and casual, with a lot of back slapping, but Jay clasps the back of his neck and presses their foreheads together. “I’m not leaving you,” Jay says. “Not _you_. Never you. You’re my brother.”

Ben blinks frantically against the tears forming in his eyes and says, “You’re _my_ brother” when he actually means _I love you_.

\---

When the buzzer of his flat goes Ben lets whoever it is up without even asking. Only Keanu ever comes to the flat or, at least, only to the kitchen. Ben’s flat is a fairly lonely place that he keeps meaning to decorate but never gets around to. He isn’t sure what his taste actually is and so he’d left whatever the old tenant had gone with (terrible mint green wallpaper and grey floorings. No one in the Square has any interior design abilities).

The knock at the door is far too gentle for Keanu (who announces himself like the other person has been waiting in for him all day) and Ben hesitates. It happens again, tentative and entirely unsure whether they’re going to be let in. A knock with a question mark. 

Ben isn’t surprised when he opens the door and finds that it’s Callum. Callum, on the other hand, looks completely blindsided to find Ben here, in his own flat. 

Ben says, “I -” and moves in the doorway to block Callum’s view. He’s not sure if he wants Callum to see how he lives, though Callum’s seen far too much of that already.

Callum, as if he’d been rehearsing the words the whole walk over, says, “When I was in the army there was - and I hadn’t really _been_ with anyone, by the time I got to the army, I’m not, I’ve never been confident, but there was this guy, in the same regiment as me, and we used to, or _I_ used to make up any excuse to spend time with him. Like if he needed someone to help with something, no matter what it was, or someone to sit with him on lookouts or in the canteen or just anywhere, really, I used to always find ways for it to be the two of us, in places that were far away from the camp or from everyone else. And I think, when I look back, that I was trying to take him away so I could pretend that was what my life was, away from my actual life, which - my life has never been what I want it to be, Ben. I think that’s what I should have said, when you asked me about the wedding. It’s never been what I want.”

“What do you -”

“I was in love with him. I didn’t even realise it. But, when he died -”

“He _died_?”

“- I thought about it and I loved him. I never did anything about it. And he’d been writing these letters and he _knew_ the entire time and he’d been waiting for me to realise and I never did. And that’s what I’m like, Ben, I never do what I want, I do what I think is _right_ and I try really really hard to make everyone else happy but _I’m_ not happy. I don’t know when I get to be happy.”

“You can -”

“I’ve been doing that with you. When you said, about that bar in the city, that’s exactly what I’d done. Taken you away so I could pretend. And in the station. And at the party. I just always want -”

Ben says, “What do you want?” 

One of Ben’s hands, and he hadn’t been conscious of doing it, is on the lapel of Callum’s coat. Not clinging, not yet, but just placed over Callum’s heart (fluttering somewhere beneath the fabric). He’s not trying to hide his flat from view at all anymore, Callum is two steps forward, practically inside, his right foot is between both of Ben’s, and he’s looking at Ben in not a gentle way at all. He’s looking like if something doesn’t happen, right now, then he might combust. To Ben, it’s like looking at a reflection of himself, seeing someone let go of however they’re trying to keep themselves together. Watching someone slowly unravel. 

“You,” Callum replies, breathless with effort. 

“No, you don’t,” Ben says. “No one does.” Then he adds, “You’re getting married,” because he thinks he should have said that first and, “We’re not compatible, me and you, even without all that, there’s no way,” because he feels the need to bring Callum back down to earth. 

“You’ve been saying that since the day I met you.”

“It’s true.”

“I love Whitney,” Callum says, not to Ben at all, to himself. He moves forward though there’s nowhere for him to move forward _to _, the milimetre of space between them disappears. Ben’s free hand, with nowhere to go, ends up on the curve of Callum’s elbow.__

__“I’m getting mixed messages.” Ben attempts to joke but loses the tone halfway. All the words come out tangled in each other. His fingers, on the hand that’s still over Callum’s heart, curl._ _

__“I do. She’s amazing. But it’s like everyone told me I was supposed to be with her. Everyone kept telling me to ask her out and kept saying that I obviously liked her and how great she is and -”_ _

__“Whereas everyone told you to stay away from me.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Callum says. “They did.”_ _

__“You’re not exactly -”_ _

__“I’m sick of everyone telling me what’s best for me,” Callum mumbles, and kisses him._ _

__It’s not great, not at the start. Callum makes a surprised noise, as if he hadn’t expected to actually do it, and Ben makes a sound in reply that is so needy, so desperate, that he wants to take it back straight away. His hands are trapped in Callum’s coat and Callum barely moves, close-mouthed and hesitant, before pulling away._ _

__Ben thinks _right, well that went horribly, obviously_ and is already considering ways to pretend that it had never happened but Callum shudders once, like he’s shaking something off his shoulders, and is back on him. Almost literally. He cups Ben’s face in his huge hands, thumbs to Ben’s cheekbones, kisses him again. He opens his mouth and Ben lets go of whatever grip he had left on himself and kisses back._ _

__Ben is loud, he knows he is, he’s loud in _life_ , but he’s not sure if he’s ever been this loud. He sighs and gasps and inhales and Callum swallows them all down, cages his fingers around the back of Ben’s head and murmurs something that Ben can’t catch. Ben pushes at Callum’s coat until it’s half off his shoulders, presses his mouth to the part of Callum’s neck where his blush starts, and then his back is against his terrible wallpaper as Callum crowds him into a corner of the living room that Ben wasn’t even aware of getting to. He hadn’t noticed them moving from the doorway. _ _

__“Callum,” Ben says into the soft skin under Callum’s ear. Callum groans. “ _Callum_.” _ _

__“You’re really loud.” Callum kisses the side of Ben’s head, like he can’t help it. “I knew you would be, but -”_ _

__“Sorry.”_ _

__“Don’t apologise, I -”_ _

__Ben has to cut him off before he says _I like it_ or something equally awful. “Are you sure? Is this really something that you want to do?”_ _

__“You’re asking me if you’re really someone that I want. Don’t try and -”_ _

__“Am I?” Ben doesn’t recognise the hope in his own voice._ _

__“I told you,” Callum says. “I said you were.” Ben can’t look at him, he rests his forehead on Callum’s collarbone and nods. “You haven’t said much back though.”_ _

__It’s a terrible idea. Ben’s barely existing conscience revives itself enough to say _he’s engaged, he doesn’t know what he wants, why would it be you_. Paul’s voice, from an argument long repressed, says _why are you always trying to break your own heart_. Ben hadn’t said anything in reply then but he thinks his heart has never been fully formed. It’s always been broken in some way. _ _

__“I want you,” Callum adds, into the silence that isn’t silent because of how heavily they’re both breathing. “Just in case you need me to say it again.”_ _

__Ben raises his head to look at Callum. Callum’s eyes are soft (in a molten way, with fire behind them) and he smiles (his lips are swollen, Ben had done that) uncertainly, almost like he may have misjudged things. Only one side of his mouth goes up so Ben lifts his thumb to the other side and presses._ _

__“I want you,” Ben says. “Just in case you need me to say it at all.”_ _

____

\---

Ben is used to hurrying his hook-ups out of his flat as soon as possible. Ideally as soon as they’re awake or, in some cases, the second the afterglow has faded. He has a speech, a _it was fun, you’re a nice guy, but I’m not looking for anything serious_ , that he sometimes adds _don’t text me_ too if the guy looks as if he might like Ben, or might want to see him again. Ben is starting to realise that, in spite of everything that’s happened in his life, the prospect of people genuinely liking him seems to scare him the most.

He’s past the point of wondering if Callum likes him. He knows it now, for a fact. A beautiful fact that Ben wants to store away somewhere and keep, whatever happens next. He fully expects that Callum will want to go straight away, that he’ll be attacked by his own morals and goodness and be horrified at himself. 

Callum doesn’t look horrified, really more surprised. He stares at Ben in his usual considering way, propped up on one of Ben’s grey pillows, in Ben’s _bed_ , and Ben stares back. 

“I usually ask people to leave,” he says, unable to resist giving Callum a further warning, an extra detail about how awful he is. “I rush them out of the door and tell them not to come back.”

Callum touches the back of his hand to Ben’s forehead. “Is that your way of telling me to go?”

“Is Whitney going to wonder where you are?”

“She’s out. I’ll say I met my brother for a drink and stayed over his.” 

“You had a story planned?”

“I didn’t think this was going to happen. I wanted to say some things to you that I didn’t say last time but when I’m around you I just - I didn’t mean for -”

“It’s too early for regrets.” They’re lying in a very domestic way, Ben realises, as though they do this all the time and this is just the way they sleep. Curved towards each other, bending in the middle like the top piece of a heart. “We can save those for later.”

“I don’t have any regrets,” Callum says. “Well, not about this. I have loads of regrets about other things.”

“You think you would have been together? You and the guy from the army? If he’d said something, or you’d said -”

“I don’t think so. I wasn’t ready, I didn’t even realise how I felt about him until - you know.”

“Until it was too late?”

Callum nods. His hair is a mess and Ben thinks _I did that_ , it was his fingertips that messed up Callum’s fringe and created the little waves that are settling around his temples. Will he tidy his hair up before he leaves or not? Will he get home and look at himself in the mirror and _know_ it was Ben? Ben likes to think so. He likes to think of Callum remembering. 

“I know what that’s like. Being too late.”

“The guy who lived in our flat,” Callum guesses. Ben nods. “You liked him and didn’t say anything?”

“No, I -” The effort of saying something he’s never said out loud, of thoughts becoming words, makes him hesitant. Callum starts to say something that sounds like “you don’t have to” but Ben thinks _no, I do_. “I was in love with him. We were together. But, I didn’t say anything.”

“You mean you never told him you loved him?”

“I never really told him anything. I don’t know if he ever really knew me. And that wasn’t his fault because he was amazing. He was such a _good_ person. But whenever I tried to say it, to say _anything_ , I could think of a thousand reasons why it was safer not to.”

Callum repeats, “Safer?”

“Come on Callum, you know. Everyone’s better off without me. I just ruin everything. I don’t even mean to, it happens and I’m always left at the end wondering what I did. I always pushed him away and he always came back. I shouldn’t be around good people, that’s not for me. I ruin them. They leave, or they hate me, or they die. And all of those things are my fault. And with Paul, I was almost - I could see myself becoming someone I wanted to be and we were going to move away, from all of this, and from my dad, I could see it. But then.” He rubs at his eyes. He’s not crying, not exactly, but he can feel that he’s close and is immediately annoyed with himself.

“He died,” Callum states, finishing the sentence.

“Yeah. My fault. Obviously.”

Callum doesn’t ask for any further details. He scuffs his thumbs over Ben’s cheekbones, removing tears that aren’t even there yet. “That’s what you want? To leave all this?” He says _all this_ like Ben has something of value to leave. 

“It’s like I have nothing to stay for, but nothing to go for either.”

“What if you did have something?” 

“I don’t,” Ben states, flatly, trampling all over the hope in Callum’s voice. Callum exhales, sharply, and he feels the need to add, “Not the way you do. Your flat, your fiancee, your job. You’ve got everything.”

“Yeah. It feels like it.”

“Whitney’s great, you said, she loves you, you’d be happy. You’d pass the assessment eventually, you’d probably have kids I’m guessing, proper domestic. You’d move out of that flat and into one of the terraces and you’d -”

Callum says, “Stop. I don’t want to talk about that. Not now.”

“Oh. We’re pretending again?

Callum grimaces, more at himself than Ben. “It’s not pretending with you. Not anymore. And I don’t know if it ever was. It’s not pretending if it’s something you want, is it? That sorta moves it from pretending into -”

“What? Wish fulfilment?”

“I don’t -”

“It’s not happening again,” Ben says. Ridiculous sounding, considering where they are, how they’re lying like a pair of quotation marks, considering that he should have told Callum to leave hours ago, maybe as soon as he’d opened the door. “You’re not worth the hassle,” ridiculous again, considering that Callum is worth everything. 

“I just -”

“I’m not your mistress. You can’t take me to bars in the city where we won’t see anyone we know, or come over here on nights when your fiancee’s out and you can lie about where you’ve been. If that’s what your plan was.”

“You think that’s what I think of you?”

“You’re engaged. What you think of _me_ isn’t really important.”

“I think of you,” Callum says. “All the time. Always.” Ben tries to say something, maybe _I’m very memorable_ but Callum stops him, scuffs his knuckles at Ben’s jaw and adds, “When I saw you at the station. You’re probably gonna say you saw me first but you didn’t, I remember the first time you saw me because you sighed and looked at me and I could tell you’d noticed me but I’d seen you before that. So many times. And I asked who you were and people said, uh, a load of stuff about you but that didn’t matter, it _doesn’t_ matter, to me.”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t. You think any of that scares me?”

“It depends which ones they told you about.”

“I didn’t even need pasta, that day in the shop, I was hanging around to see if I could -”

“All of this,” Ben interrupts. “Would be really lovely if you weren’t engaged. Or if I wasn’t who I am. If we were completely different people living in a completely different place.”

“We’re not though. We’re us.”

“There’s the problem,” Ben says.

“What if I wasn’t engaged?”

“That’s not a fair thing to say,” Ben points out. “To me or Whitney.”

Callum instantly says, “I’m sorry,” incredibly sincerely, every syllable of it expressed on his face. “I didn’t mean to say it. Not like that.”

Ben wants to ask _do you even want to marry her?_ but he isn’t sure he can cope with any of the possible answers: he feels too exposed, staring at the creases he’s made in Callum’s hair, the still pink marks on Callum’s skin (how exactly is he going to explain those?), the softness in Callum’s eyes. It’s as if Callum has the remnants of Ben’s heart in his hand, squeezing with a pressure that should be gentle but is mostly making Ben feel like something is going to burst. It’s easier to just destroy it himself.

“I think you should leave,” he tells Callum. 

Whatever was going to break happens behind Callum’s eyes. “Is it because of what I said? I wasn’t - I said it without thinking, I didn’t -”

“It’s because of everything you said.” Ben is up, out of the bed with a speed he doesn’t usually possess, and is gathering anything he can find that belongs to Callum. He throws Callum’s t-shirt to him from the foot of the bed, then finds his coat out in the living room, almost at the door. Ben doesn’t remember which one of them removed it. He says, “Please just go,” to the softness of Callum’s feet, padding over from the bedroom. 

“If that’s what you want,” Callum says. 

“Everyone keeps assuming what I want.” Ben is holding Callum’s coat to his chest, almost wringing his hands with it. He blinks and throws it to Callum. “ _I_ don’t even know what I want. I’m never allowed to want anything.”

“You want me to go.” 

“No. Yes.”

“You’re not -”

“What did they tell you about me at the station? When they warned you off or told you to stay away from me or that I’m bad news or whatever. There’s a list, Callum, there’s so many things. I’ve been in prison twice, I killed - or I was responsible for, I’ve _been_ responsible for people dying, I’ve helped with so many things and I think you think it’s just stolen cars or shoplifting or something but it’s not. I bet you’ve never done a bad thing in your life. Not like me. Something inside of me’s broken. You should have listened when they told you.”

Callum opens and closes his mouth. “I told you it -”

“How can it not matter? Don’t you understand what being around me would do to you?”

“I understand. That’s why _I’m_ here. I wanted -”

“Fine,” Ben says. “Fine. You got what you wanted. It’s out of your system. I hope it helped with whatever gay crisis you’ve got going on.”

Callum nods, sharply. “Okay.” He nods again, like he’s trying to convince himself of something, and makes it part of the way to the door before he turns back to Ben. “They didn’t say you were bad news. They said a lot of the other stuff, I knew about that, and they _did_ tell me to stay away from you, but not because you’re a bad person or that there’s something wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with you.”

Ben is interested in spite of himself. “What did they say then?”

“They said your dad controls you too much. Or that you could make something of yourself, _for_ yourself, if you got away from him. They said they can’t get him into the station because you take the flack for him most of the time but that he’s never that bothered when something happens to you. And I know what that’s like, Ben, to have a dad like that.”

Ben has, at this point, held a gun to his dad’s head on two separate occasions. He’s tried to extort money from him, has been left out of his will, gets sat at the opposite end of the table while Keanu gets centre stage. He’s been blamed for his deafness, his weakness, the vulnerability at his core that his dad seems to find so distasteful, for not being Keanu or Jay, for only being himself which was never enough. 

Paul comes back into his mind, for once fully formed. Ben can see every curl of his hair, the constellation of his freckles, his outstretched arm as he tried to get Ben to hold his hand ( _here, in the middle of street?_ ), the disdain of his voice as he said: Your dad is going to ruin you. You have to see that. You’re chasing something you’re never going to get from him, he’s not going to magically turn around one day and say that he loves you. He uses you. He knows how badly you want him to accept you and he manipulates you. You’re never going to be enough for him. But you’re enough for me. You can see that, right? 

Ben doesn’t know what he’d said in response and is amazed that he even remembers the whole speech because, an hour later, Paul was dead. Ben had held his hand, like he’d refused to do while they were walking, and said: I’m sorry. This is what happens. This is what always happens. And then he’d said _I love you_ , when he should have said it before, should have said it a thousand times. Ben had been enough for Paul, but Paul was too much for Ben. He’d died never knowing that and something in Ben had died too. 

His dad had never really said that he was sorry about it. He knew Paul had existed but his interest in him was fleeting. But, completely randomly, maybe a few months later, he had clasped his hand to Ben’s shoulder and said, “You’re alright?” From his dad, a clasp on the shoulder is like an embrace. Ben said, “Yeah,” and that’s what always happens with his dad. He offers up crumbs, tiny instances of acceptance, and Ben grabs onto every single one. Makes it the centre of his universe.

“You don’t understand anything about me and my dad,” he tells Callum. 

It’s a lie, obviously. Callum has understood everything.

\---

Ben doesn’t tell anyone. The only person he really would tell is Jay, and Jay (for all he wants Ben to settle down in the type of domestic bliss that he thinks will save him) has very deep and long-standing morals around cheating that mean he probably won’t be sympathetic.

Ben has no morals really, but he does help Whitney clean graffiti from her stall. She attracts a lot of bad luck, for someone so inoffensive. She says so herself, halfway through dipping a sponge in a bucket filled with soapy water. “Why does this always happen to me?”

Ben squeezes his sponge with more violence than is really needed. “It’s not your fault.”

She shrugs, the motion makes her earrings clatter like wind chimes. “Thanks for doing this. It would have taken me ages on my own.”

“I mean it,” Ben says. “It’s not your fault.”

“It just isn’t fair. I’m only trying to live my life, to be happy. Isn’t that all anyone’s trying to do?” She looks at Ben. “Maybe not you, but -”

“Why maybe not me?”

“You never seem happy.”

“I didn’t know that you paid that much attention to me.”

“I think it’s best to be on my guard,” Whitney says, lightly, teasing and also not teasing at all. 

Ben nods, says, “That seems fair” because he’d be on his guard against himself too, from the outside. He drops his sponge back in the bucket. “If you know who did this I can -”

“It’s fine. I’d rather just forget about it and move on. Trying to sort it sometimes makes it worse.”

“Speaking from experience?”

Whitney smiles, though it doesn’t quite meet the icy-blue of her eyes. “Of course. You know where we live, right? What happens here? You’ve been here longer than me.”

“I’ve been here too long,” Ben replies. He kicks the bucket with his foot, almost topples it over. “Way too long.”

Whitney says, “Then leave?” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. And it should be. They’re in London, you can get to literally anywhere from here. “I used to think I would leave one day. I _wanted_ to, with everything that happened. You know. But then I met Callum and now everything’s almost good again. I think I deserve that.”

Ben’s stuck on the _almost_ good but he manages, “Yeah. I mean. You’ve got the wedding in a few months, and -”

Whitney laughs. “It’s in two weeks. Didn’t Callum tell you? I thought you two were getting on, when I saw -”

Ben says, “Two _weeks_?” and he sounds too shocked, he knows he does, Whitney will surely notice. He almost wants to laugh, but it’s expected. He feels like he gave Callum a test and Callum failed it, had immediately run away and said _let’s bring the wedding forward_ in an attempt to put as much distance between him and Ben as possible. “Bit fast isn’t it? You only just had the engagement party.” Whitney starts to say something and he feels the need to add, “It’s not a shotgun wedding, is it? Because you -”

She looks offended because they’re really not good enough friends (or not friends at all) for Ben to tease her. They’re not good enough friends for him to talk to her like this at all. “No, we just didn’t want to wait.”

“Wait for what? For something to happen?”

Whitney crosses from offended into annoyed. Ben sighs, wonders why he can’t ever just do something good without spoiling it. Whitney, as if she can see inside his head, says, “Why can’t you just be decent for more than five minutes? Is there a limit on how long you can handle being nice?”

Ben kicks the bucket again, and really does knock it over this time. He says, “Apparently. Sorry again about the stall,” and walks away.

\---

Ben glares at every police officer in the station. A few of them look surprised, because Ben’s expressions towards coppers are usually flirty (he likes the uniform, can’t help it). He would have preferred if they had just given Callum the full list of Ben Mitchell’s Misdeeds (theft, accidental murder, not entirely accidental GBH, money laundering, more theft, many stolen cars) instead of trying to pass comment on him as a person. He tries to work out which one might have said the _make something of himself_ , he’d like to know what they’ve seen in him to make them say that, what the something might be. He’s mostly embarrassed that they, this nameless mass of coppers, have noticed that his dad has never once come to collect him.

Callum has acquired another baby. It has a chubby fist wrapped around his navy blue tie and is staring at him in an adoring way that Ben almost recognises. Callum walks left across the waiting room, bounces the baby twice, looks at Ben, and then walks right, bounces the baby, looks at Ben. Ben looks back.

Ben is there to collect Tubbs, who is always grateful and usually wants to go for drinks somewhere before Ben will abandon him to go to the nearest club but, for once, Ben declines. He sits on a bench outside the station and pretends he’s not waiting for Callum. He doesn’t know if it works. Nonchalance has never been a strong point of his, he wears pieces of his heart all over himself, not just on his sleeve.

Callum, when he emerges, shields his eyes either from Ben or the sun and says, “Are you waiting for me?”

“No.” Ben shrugs. “Just loitering.” 

“Whit said that you helped her with the stall.”

“Yeah. She also said the wedding’s in two weeks.”

Callum ducks his head, pushes his chin right into the collar of his coat. “I was going to tell you.”

“Why would you tell me? It’s nothing to do with me.”

Callum says, “Ben,” hopelessly, like he can’t say anything else. “Do you want to get a drink or something?”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“No.”

Ben says, “Neither do I. Let’s go.”

Callum takes the two steps down from the station entrance and offers the type of fond look that makes Ben feel too observed. He turns and looks over his shoulder to try and find who Callum is actually looking at because it can’t possibly be him. It’s not a way you should look at someone who isn’t your fiancee. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me again. Or that you were just going to keep out of my way.”

“That’s the problem, I don’t want to keep out of your way.”

Callum pushes his chin down again but this time it’s to hide his smile in the collar of his coat. Ben sees it anyway. “Okay.”

Ben follows where Callum walks which is, predictably, away from the Square (though not as far as last time) and into a pub that Callum seems to select completely at random; an incredibly dark place that Ben thinks he may have been in before. He says so to Callum at the bar. “A lot of hidden corners. I like that in a pub.”

Callum fumbles with his wallet. “Yeah?”

“I’m not implying that you only brought me here for -”

“No,” Callum says. “I just wanted -”

“I helped Whitney with her stall because I felt guilty. And I didn’t think I could feel guilt anymore, which was interesting, and she said you’re having the wedding so fast because you don’t want to wait, and I think I implied that you might be rushing to avoid something happening.” 

They sit in one of the hidden corners. Callum doesn’t seem to realise until they’re there and Ben says _yeah, definitely been here before_. Callum flushes and Ben’s fingertips tingle from wanting to reach out and touch him, right where the blush is gathering on his cheekbone. 

Callum clears his throat and says, “It already happened. The thing I was trying to avoid.”

“Really?” Ben raises his eyebrow. “Seems to me like you weren’t really trying to avoid it at all.”

“We only brought the wedding forward last week. Or _I_ asked her to bring the wedding forward. I didn’t know what else to do, I just panicked after what happened with you.”

Ben runs his thumb around the rim of his pint glass. “I didn’t mean for you to panic, I -”

“No, it’s not bad panicking. That’s the thing. The morning after we - I was with Whitney, in bed, not like that she was asleep but - I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I _can’t_ stop thinking about you. I’ve replayed the whole thing in my head, so many times, Ben. You’re right I wasn’t avoiding it, I wanted it to happen, more than I’ve wanted anything, and she asked me why I was distracted, and why I’d been smiling to myself all day, and I didn’t know what to say, so I just -”

“Told her you wanted to get married sooner?” Ben finishes. 

Callum nods heavily, looks up at Ben through his eyelashes and then smiles just enough to make the corners of his eyes crinkle. Ben feels himself smile back and thinks, the realisation like a thunderbolt to his soul, _He loves me_. Or, more accurately, _I think he thinks that he loves me_. He sighs and directs his gaze down at the table. 

Callum says, “You always do that. Turn away when I look at you.”

“You shouldn’t be looking at me at all.” Ben takes a long swig of his pint. “Did you bring me here so you could tell me the wedding’s still going ahead? Because I wasn’t deluding myself about that. It’s not like - We’re not - There’s no feelings, we’re not exactly going to run off into the sunset together. You were always going to marry her.”

The crinkles at Callum’s eyes disappear. “No feelings?”

“Just do it. Get married. Have the life you deserve. You’ll be happy, you said that, Whitney’s great and you’d be all nice and domestic and I want that for you. Really, I do. You deserve to be happy. I wouldn’t make you happy. I wouldn’t make anyone happy.”

Callum repeats, “No feelings,” flatly. “I only brought the wedding forward because I felt guilty, Ben, and I felt awful because I wasn’t guilty over what happened, it was because I wanted it to happen again. I _want_ it to -”

Ben can see it all, the whole thing, the possibilities. Callum getting married, sneaking away to meet Ben in faraway pubs and cheap hotels, pressing him against the walls of hidden alleyways, making sure their arms brush when they walk past each other in the Square, never talking above a whisper. He’d be Callum’s secret, chasing his smiles, fighting for his time. He’d be jealous of Whitney but also sorry for her, he’d stare at them both across the bar of the Vic thinking _that should be me_. Callum would say _I’ll leave her_ , maybe, and never do it. Ben would get outwardly angry but inwardly sad. The things that once seemed exciting wouldn’t be the same. He would want domesticity and gentleness. He would want Callum for himself, entirely. Maybe he’d want to say _we’ll leave_ and never do it, so he’d end it instead and Callum would be upset and it would be like stabbing himself in the heart because he’s in love with him. 

He knows it now, here in a hidden corner of a pub where he’s been with so many anonymous men. He loves him. To have it in secret wouldn’t be enough. To have it for real would be too much. To not have it at all is safer. And it’s not even to protect himself, he’s beyond protecting, it’s for Callum. Ben would break him, like all those plates he’d smashed in the flat, would take something beautiful and shatter it to pieces. 

Ben shakes his head. “It was just one night. And it was intense, I get that, with everything else, and you got it out of your system now, that’s a good thing. You can go into married life with a -”

“Out of my system?” Callum half-shouts, too loud for the pub and louder than Ben has ever heard him speak. He flushes and drops his voice. “It’s not about that. It was never that, is that what you think? I remember what you said, you remember what I said. Don’t pretend it didn’t mean anything because I _know_ it did. It meant something to me. I missed the chance, with Chris, but with you - I’ve never felt -”

“You’re getting married.”

“Tell me not to.”

Ben says, “What?” and almost does. Almost says _don’t marry her. Be with me. Stay with me. Leave the Square with me_. 

“If there was a chance -”

“There is no chance! You’re you and I’m this. What do you think is gonna happen? You’re going to save me from myself?”

“You don’t need saving. And anything can happen, Ben, whatever you want.”

“You’re getting married.”

“I thought it was the right thing to do, I was just trying to do what people expected of me. I’ve always just wanted people to accept me and to be _normal_ and do whatever everyone wanted, and I thought I could do it until I met you. I’ve been looking for this for half my -”

“You’re getting married,” Ben says, third time’s a charm, third time makes it real. “It’s not on me to tell you not to.”

He stands up and Callum mumbles something that sounds like _don’t leave_. But he does.

\---

Sharon is back wandering around the Square, the steady clack of her heels seems to echo through Ben’s head. She’s outside the Minute Mart, at the side of the car lot, leaning on the railings by the Arches, dressed completely in black as always. The voluminous nature of her sleeves makes it look like she has wings.

“Argued with my dad?” he finally asks. They’re outside the car lot, Sharon perched daintily on the steps like some kind of avenging raven. 

Sharon flicks her fringe. “When are we not arguing?”

“You were okay last year, weren’t you? For a few months? I think it was a record.”

“This one’s bad.”

“They’re _all_ bad. Have you been back in the cafe to tell people how terrible we are yet?”

“You know I don’t really think that of you, don’t you?”

Ben frowns. “Well, you do. Why wouldn’t you?”

“It’s never about you, it’s just your dad. You were like a son to me, Ben but sometimes I wonder where you went. That little boy who would make me play show tunes so we could waltz around the living room. You used to cry every day when I dropped you off at school, you remember? Because you thought I was leaving you. You’d be so happy when I came back to pick you up. You were such a sweet boy. I used to pretend you were mine and that I was going to take you away from your dad to send you to stage school. I thought you were going to end up in the West End and I’d come to watch you and I would have been so proud.”

“I don’t really have time for a trip down memory lane, Sharon.”

“I let you down. Everyone did. I look at you now and I can’t work out how it happened. Your dad ruined you and I let him do it. It makes me sad to think that I -”

“What’s the point of this?” Ben pulls at the sleeves of his coat. 

“I just wish that I’d -”

“This would have been helpful about fifteen years ago, Sharon.”

“I know.” Sharon retrieves a square of tissue from somewhere within the billows of her sleeve and delicately dabs under her eyes. “But I feel responsible. It’s such a waste. He was never grateful for anything.”

“You talking about you or me?”

“Both of us. The difference is that you’ve got time to make a new life.”

“So have you. It’s not like you’re a hundred years old.”

“I mean it, Ben.”

Ben sits beside her. “Everyone’s talking about me getting away at the moment. Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No. Just helping you get rid of your dad.” Sharon sniffs. “Who else is telling you this?”

“Jay. Obviously. And, uh, Callum, sometimes.”

“Who’s Callum?”

“The CSO. The one you told to stay away from me.”

“The nice looking one?” Sharon raises one eyebrow into a perfect arch. “Guessing he didn’t take my advice.”

“No. He really didn’t.” 

“He’s engaged.” 

“Yeah. Getting married in two weeks.” Sharon huffs and Ben half-laughs. “That’s never stopped anyone around here before. Including you.”

“Getting an attack of morals, are you?”

“It’s not that. He just -”

Sharon leans over, pushes her shoulder gently to Ben’s. “Just what?”

“Likes me. For some reason. It doesn’t matter. It’s not worth the hassle.”

“Some things are.”

“Like my dad?”

“Ben, I think your dad’s the only thing in the world that you think _is_ worth the hassle. And he doesn’t feel the same. About either of us. It’s all just never enough.”

Ben stares at her. Sharon sometimes gets introspective when she and his dad have argued but the eye of the storm has always been unchanged: she loves his dad. His dad probably loves her, in a slightly obsessive way that means he never wants her to leave. Ben hasn’t heard her talk like this, not once, even back when he was a terrified eight-year-old who couldn’t be left at school without crying because his mum had done that and she _hadn’t come back_. Sharon had always come back. 

“What’s happened?” he says. “Why is it bad this time?”

“It’s about Keanu.”

“You and my dad have argued about _Keanu_?” Ben asks. Then, suddenly, realisation. “You can’t seriously -”

“He was kind to me. He made me feel wanted when your dad -”

Ben presses his hands over his ears. “I don’t want details, Sharon, I just - Keanu. Seriously.”

“And you know your dad, how he feels about Keanu.”

“Obviously. Favourite son and all that. Maybe I’ll get back in the will.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Ben. You know what your dad’s going to try and do, what he’s going to tell you to try and get you back on side. He’s going to say anything to get you to try and do something that he doesn’t want to do. He never gets his hands dirty.”

“No. I’ve always been there to do it for him.”

“I’m leaving,” Sharon says. “For good, for real. By myself. I should have done it years ago, when I think of all this wasted time, all the things I should have done. Everything revolved around him and I never had enough in me to get away.”

Sharon, when she collected him from school, would always throw her arms out, enfold Ben in layers of whatever black satin she was wearing at the time, and say _there you are!_ like she’d been looking for him for hours. Ben has to bite down, hard, on his bottom lip to stop himself from saying something too revealing. “So this is just you coming to say goodbye?”

“Goodbye and get yourself out.” 

“What makes you think I’ve got enough in _me_ to leave?”

“Because there’s a lot in you. And if you don’t go soon, you never will.” Sharon stands, smooths down her dress, touches Ben’s arm. “I’ll text you, when I get wherever I’m going. If you ever wanted to see me, you know you’d always be welcome.”

Ben puts his hand over hers, pats once. “Bye then.”

Sharon smiles in the quivering way she always does, with a lot of eyelash flutters and a flick of hair, and then she’s gone.

\---

Jay isn’t surprised. In a few weeks away from the Square he already looks healthier, there are no bags under his eyes, his face isn’t so drawn. He’s working at a car lot somewhere up West (not one Ben knows because it’s actually a legitimate business) and is midway through growing what looks to be a terrible beard but he looks good. He looks happy. He says, “Fucking Keanu,” and, “I never liked him. No one did. There was nothing up there.” He raps his knuckles against his forehead. “Where is he now?”

Ben shrugs. “Dunno. Not with Sharon, she said she was leaving on her own.”

“Your dad must have gone _mental_.”

“He hasn’t phoned me. I only know because of Sharon. It’s not like he ever asks me for advice on anything.”

“No, he just asks you to get your hands dirty when he can’t be bothered.” Jay’s eyes suddenly widen and he leans forward. “Ben. You know what he’s gonna ask you to do.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He _would_. You know how he works. He’ll call you, invite you for a drink, make some halfhearted apologies and then he’ll ask you to do something he doesn’t want to get involved in and he’ll walk away when it goes wrong.”

“That’s not how it goes.”

“It’s how it always goes. He says all these things about it being different and he never means it.”

“But he might. One time he might.”

Jay is silent for a long time. Long enough for Ben to finish his pint. He can see Jay thinking, considering how to say what he wants to without making it seem harsh and not being able to come up with anything. What Jay wants to say, what Ben hears as if he’d actually said it, is _he’ll never mean it. He’s never going to change_. 

“He’ll call you,” Jay finally manages. “At some point. I’m guessing in a few days. He’ll ask you to meet him in the Vic, and he’ll sit somewhere in the open to show that he’s happy to be seen with you. He’ll buy you a drink and he’ll have one for himself which he hasn’t touched but it’s just there to worry you. He’ll say you haven’t talked much and it’s his fault, and he’ll say that he appreciates what you do for the business. And probably a load of other stuff about being proud of you. And then he’ll ask.” 

“What, for me to hurt Keanu? He’d never ask me to do that.”

Jay frowns. “He’d ask you to do anything.”

\---

His dad texts _Meet me in the Vic_. Ben notices that he’s changed his name in his phone from Dad to Phil, and can’t remember when. It must have been during one of his misguided attempts to break out of the cycle, to try and make him not reply.

He replies. _When?_

His dad says _Already there_ like Ben just sits around waiting to be contacted, like he can snap his fingers and Ben will appear at his heels. 

Ben goes. His dad is at a table that’s too close to the bar, in full view of everyone. He has two double whiskeys in front of him, and he pushes one to Ben when he sits down. Ben leans over and takes the other. 

Ben says, “What’s this about?”

“I’ve been thinking that we haven’t talked much over the past few months. And that’s on me, I know. I’ve been busy with the business, there’s been a lot on, and you know that job with Danny -”

“I don’t know. You didn’t tell me anything about it.”

“No, but that was just for your own good. And I appreciated you doing that, with the records. I know I’m not always fair to you, or I don’t give you credit, but I wanted you to know that you’re important to me. To the business.”

Ben makes a small considering _hmm_ sort of noise. In spite of everything he can feel something in him light up: _You appreciate me! I’m important to you!_ He tries to look bothered but he must smile because his dad half-smiles back. 

“And I know it’s hard, seeing other people above you, but that’s just because I wasn't sure if it was what you wanted. But I can see now that you’re serious. And I think you’re ready to take a step up, with me. If you wanted.”

Ben, instantly, so instantly that he’s ashamed of himself, says, “Yes.”

His dad smiles again. There’s a sense of triumph in it. “Then I have something I want you to do. It’s about Keanu.”

“I guessed. I saw Sharon.”

“You’ve never liked him. I should have listened.” 

Ben gets stuck on _You know you should have listened to me!_ But he shakes his head a little because he knows that he didn’t dislike Keanu for himself. Keanu has no identifiable personality traits, it’s hard to even form an opinion on someone like that. It was more what Keanu represented. That he should have been the real Ben Mtichell. The one his dad still thinks went missing at birth. Keanu found his way back, to the head of the table, into the will, at his dad’s side, collecting all the money. 

“You want me to rough him up a bit?” Ben says, uncertainly. Keanu looks like he can handle himself. “Or arrange someone to do it?” 

“No,” his dad says. “I want you to kill him.”

Ben’s stuttering heart gasps to a halt. He says, “What? You can’t be serious.”

“You’re my boy.” _You’re claiming me as your son!_ “He betrayed me. They both did. I want you to get the chance to do it, show him what you’re made of.”

Ben mumbles, “Don’t make it about that,” which makes his dad immediately reach out for one of the drinks. “No! No, I didn’t mean - How do you want to do it?”

“I’ll send you the details soon. I’m making some arrangements.” His dad stands.

Ben says, “You’re not staying?” but of course he isn’t. Ben’s purpose has been served. “And what - I didn’t say yes.”

His dad puts his hand on his shoulder, tightly. “You won’t do it? I’m asking you because you’re my son. He betrayed our _family_ , Does that mean nothing? Maybe I was wrong about you taking a step up. I thought that was what you wanted.”

“It’s a big step.”

“I can ask someone else.” 

His dad has said that a hundred times in a variety of ways. _Don’t bother, I’ll get someone else_ , another person in Ben’s place. A replacement son. _Two_ replacement sons. One left, one betrayed him. Only Ben is still here. Ben will always still be here.

“No,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

His dad doesn’t say anything else, just nods in a satisfied way and squeezes Ben’s shoulder. He walks away and has to step around Callum, who is walking through the door as he’s leaving. Callum barely gives him a glance because he immediately looks at Ben (on the awful out in the open table), then at the drinks in front of him. 

Ben thinks that he might cry. He never cries when he’s sad, he’s sad so often that he would never stop, but being scared or overwhelmed always does it. What is he now? He thinks _I just agreed to kill Keanu_ and downs one of the whiskeys. _I just told my dad I would kill someone_. Exactly as Jay had said. He’s been played, he knows, like a violin. Like a thing that his dad’s classically trained in, he knows all of the ways to get the most out of Ben, always has. He reaches for the other whiskey.

Callum says, “Everything alright?”

He’s wearing a soft looking forest green shirt and a tweed coat. His hair is slightly windswept. He frowns, one eyebrow lifting, and Ben wants more badly than anything to say _when you said anything can happen, what did you mean?_ But then he thinks _I just agreed to kill someone_ and looks up at Callum, haloed by the gold of the Vic’s cheap looking wall lamps. _I would absolutely ruin you_. 

“Can I sit down?” Callum hesitates. “It’s fine if you don’t want me to.” 

Ben is helpless to say anything other than, “Yes.”

Callum sits. “Seriously, are you alright? You look a bit.” He stops, apparently unable to decide what Ben looks a bit like. “I’m glad that you’re here. I wanted to speak to you.”

“What, _here_?”

“You want to go somewhere else?” 

“I don’t know that we’ve got anything to talk about.”

“We have, You know we have.”

“I’ve said everything I wanted to say to you.”

“I haven’t,” Callum says. “There’s a lot I haven’t said. Or that I tried to say and it came out wrong.”

Ben drinks the second whiskey. “You have to stop this.”

“What?”

“ _This_.” Ben holds his arms out, opens them around Callum like he’s revealing him to an audience. “All of this. It’s not fair.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Callum almost reaches back, Ben sees him lean forward and then stop himself. “Please. Can we just go somewhere?”

Ben says, “The Arches. Don’t follow me now, come there in ten minutes. I’ll wait.”

On the way to the Arches he stops, leans his forehead against the cold brick of an alleyway and yells as loudly as he possibly can. It sounds like a sob, like something that he is ripping out of his chest.

\---

Callum, incredibly punctual, taps on the metal door of the Arches precisely ten minutes later. Ben, letting him in, notices that his hair is neater and imagines him tidying it up on the walk over here. As if he wanted to look his best.

Ben says, “So?”

Callum says, “I love you.” 

The metal of the door is still reverbing from being closed. It makes the concrete under Ben’s feet vibrate slightly, like the ground is about to open up and swallow him. Maybe he would reach out and take Callum with him. Maybe they’d fall right through the Square and land somewhere else. 

Ben says, “No, you don’t” because that’s how he’s always responded to people telling him they love him. “You can’t.” 

“I do. I should have said it, instead of trying to get you to say things. I’m always trying to get you to say things first, and that isn’t fair.”

“You don’t love me. How can you?”

“I do. I’m telling you that I do.”

“Look.” Except Ben doesn’t look, he looks anywhere other than Callum. “This isn’t really about me. It’s about the guy from the army. And I get you missed your chance or whatever with him and you’re trying to put it right but, not with me. It can’t be with me.”

“That’s not what this is. Do you really think that?”

“Obviously. You don’t want me for me. No one does.” 

He hasn’t turned on the lights in the Arches. It’s just moonlight bouncing off steel and probably into Callum’s eyes. Ben wouldn’t know, he’s still not looking. The list of people who have loved Ben unconditionally is small: his mother (dead) and Paul (dead). He sometimes wonders if they’d loved him or wanted to fix him. He barely remembers his mother at all and she surely wouldn’t have known what he would end up becoming. Or maybe she did. 

He glances at Callum. Callum has his hands clasped over his heart, fingers open like a bird’s wing. Ben pushes his fists to his eyes and says, “Stop.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Callum. You don’t love me. You just think you do because you’re confused about the wedding and whatever happened in the army. Maybe you think I’m like everyone else in that waiting room and you can save me. You’re going to sit at my feet and tell me it’s going to be okay and the sun will come out and you’ll change my life but it’s not like that. _I’m_ not like that. You should read the list. My list, the entire thing. I’m not meant to be loved. I’m always just passing through. It’s the best way for everyone involved.”

“What does passing through even mean?”

Ben has used that line a lot over the years. No one has ever asked what it means. He doesn’t know if he’s even thought about it very much. It was just an easy way to get people out of the door. “It - I’m just not long-term. Not with anybody. Nothing serious.”

“I think that -”

“It doesn’t matter what you think! Why are we talking like we’re star crossed lovers or something?”

“I think we could be.”

“The fact that you would even say anything like that is just confirmation that this is a stupid idea.” 

Callum tilts his head, still considering, still as if there’s anything left of Ben to consider, as if he doesn’t already hold everything in his hands. “I’m not getting married.”

Ben says, “Good.”

“Is it?”

“For Whitney. And for you, for not going through with it. You can stop pretending now, can’t you? Go on dates and stuff, I know some apps. Or some bars. You know, for whatever you’re into.”

Callum blinks, says, “I’m into you,” and then instantly grimaces. “No, that was -”

“They don’t do a Ben Mitchell app. Sorry.”

“Don’t make a joke out of -”

“Demand would probably be too high.”

“I’m telling you I’m not getting married. I’m telling you that I _love_ you.”

“And I told you -”

“You haven’t told me _anything_.”

“Fine,” Ben says. He slams his hand on the nearest surface (the bonnet of a silver BMW that he thinks might have been in the garage for about six months. Probably stolen), too hard and too loudly, just for dramatic effect. “I didn’t want you to get married because, in my head, I thought - I think I wanted you to save me. I think I wanted that from the second I saw you in the station. I think I always want that but with you, it’s different. And I think that I could, eventually, start to - It feels like it could actually happen.” Callum starts to say something and Ben can feel the hope in it. The lift of his voice. “It can’t though. That’s what I mean. It’s just - I can’t have it. You.”

“Why not?”

“We’re having the same conversation,” Ben says. “All the time. Over and over. We’re not suited. I told you. Go and hook up with a nice doctor or a vet or something, have a nice gentle life. Pass your assessment.”

Callum shakes his head. “I’m quitting.”

“The police?”

“I just - I’m always trying to fit in. Everywhere. Do the right thing all the time. Everyone said I’d be a good copper so I was sort of going with it. With everything. None of it was what I wanted really. I’ve always been so lonely. And that’s sad. I’m twenty-nine and I don’t think I’ve ever done a thing in my life that was actually what I wanted to do.”

Ben says, “I know how that feels,” and Callum, in one rush of breath, says, “I know, I know you do,” and then somehow, very quickly, so fast that Ben isn’t even aware of it really happening, Callum has him pushed up against the side of the BMW, hands clasped on Ben’s face, and is kissing him, inhaling whatever Ben was about to say next right out of his mouth. 

Callum’s palms are half-covering Ben’s ears, he can hear nothing except the steady beating of his own heart and the small hitching noises that Callum makes every time he pulls back for air. The noises Ben makes are not small at all.

Callum mumbles, “You’re the only thing I’ve ever really wanted,” and, “I’m leaving, come with me, we can go wherever you want,” and, “I’m not trying to save you, I just want to be with you,” and, finally, again, “i’m leaving. I can’t, I’m not going to stay here. Come with me.”

One of Ben’s hands is somehow under Callum’s shirt. He can feel the flutters of Callum’s breath under his fingertips. “What?”

“I can’t stay. Not here. It’s not fair on Whit and, just, I have to get away. I’m just gonna follow my feet and see where I end up. Come with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Come with me.”

“You’re better off without me.”

“No.” Callum exhales, shakily. Ben feels every rise and fall of it. “That’s not true. Come with me.”

“I have to stay for my dad,” Ben says. His voice sounds very small. “He can’t - he has these meltdowns, he used to drink a lot and, I know what they say in the station, but we just have - He’s going to include me more, let me get involved, and I think it’s actually -”

“Let you get involved how?”

Ben tilts his face up in Callum’s hands, like Callum is the sun and he’s trying to drink it all in before he leaves (Ben knew he would leave). “I don’t need to spell it out, do I?”

“Something worse than bruises and stolen cars?” Ben nods. Callum sighs. “You don’t have to prove yourself to him, you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone.”

“My life revolves around me trying to prove myself to him,” Ben replies. “Maybe we aren’t that different after all.”

“I never said that we were. I knew we weren’t.” Callum nudges his forehead to Ben’s. “Your dad’s a nightmare.”

“Well, he’s my nightmare.” Ben leans away, not too far, enough to try and catch his breath. “What’s your plan here exactly? You thought I’d just agree to leave?”

“I could make you happy,” Callum says. “If you wanted me to. If you would let me. I know that I could. I want you to come with me. I don’t want you to stay here and keep doing whatever cycle you’re in with your dad. I want you to be with me and, I don’t know, maybe you’d find it boring or -”

“I wouldn’t.”

“ - maybe a bit dull, I don’t know, but I know we wouldn’t be lonely. There’s something here.” He drops one hand from Ben’s face and touches it to his heart, and then to Ben’s. “And I thought that was worth me coming here to talk to you. I wasn’t going to leave until I’d tried.”

Paul comes back into Ben’s head, flushed after an argument, framed by the hideous floral wallpaper of his awful flat except it wasn’t an awful flat, it was the only place Ben has truly felt at home: _You’re never going to let yourself be happy, are you? You’re never going to get away from your dad because I think being away from your dad scares you more than actually being around him. You’re scared of being in love, you’re scared of being vulnerable, you’re scared of anyone seeing the real you. All I get is glimpses. You expect me to leave so, what, are you just trying to make me do it? I don’t want to do this anymore_. 

Ben knows that he could, potentially, be happy with Callum. Callum could make him happy. It’s more that Ben isn’t sure if _he_ would make Callum happy. He’s never brought much joy into anyone’s life, really. 

Ben catches Callum’s hand, on its way back to his heart. “Go. Go and be happy wherever you end up, I know you will be. Maybe text me or something, I could see you, if I’m ever -”

“Passing through?” Callum supplies. 

“Yeah,” Ben finishes. “You - It was brave, what you did, with the wedding. It gets easier from here, I promise. You’ll be fine.” 

Callum laughs, bitterly, probably the harshest sound Ben has ever heard him make. “That’s it then, is it?”

“Can’t be anything more.”

“It really didn’t mean that much to you?” Callum disentangles himself, steps away. “Why even do anything with me at all? Why did you even -”

Ben has told maybe three people in his life that he loves them. Paul, of course, too late. His mother, obviously, maybe too much. He must have said it to his dad when he was a kid, but it must have been stopped. He’s never quite managed the timing, even with Paul, even when he knew he should say it because it was true, the words always got stuck. But he suddenly thinks that he cannot let Callum go without hearing it, Callum has to know, Callum can’t leave the Square thinking that it meant nothing. 

He says, “I love you,” to Callum’s back, as he’s about to open the door. “That’s what it meant to me. And it’s true, what I said about us not even knowing each other that well, because it hasn’t been that long, you have to admit that, but I don’t know, I feel it anyway. You deserve to know that.”

Callum turns around immediately, is already halfway back to Ben. “Then, why -”

“Because I agreed to kill someone. Literally thirty minutes ago. That’s what I am.” 

Callum swallows with an audible click. “You -”

“That’s it.” Ben opens his arms, like he’s about to enfold Callum into them, like he’s stood under a spotlight. “That’s me.”

“You agreed to do it for your dad? That’s what you meant earlier.” Callum shakes his head. “You don’t have to, you know you don’t.”

Ben says, “He’s my dad.”

Callum stares at him, not considering at all. He looks like he’s finally worked Ben out, that he’s seen through every layer possible. Ben has never been looked at in that way in his life. The whole moment feels too exposed and Ben knows that it’s resting on whatever either of them say next. Callum is about to say something poetic, he can tell, he might say _come with me_ again and Ben might say _yes_ and Ben can’t risk that. 

“I can’t leave,” he says, before Callum can speak. “And you can’t pretend that you’re okay with this. You’re not going to stay with me through that. I wouldn’t want you to. Your world, your everything, is nice and warm and gentle and do you really want me in that? Spoiling everything? You’re going to wait around at home, texting me to see when I’m going to be back, clean up my bruises? You think I want that for you?”

Saying it outloud only confirms how much Ben really does want that. Callum asking when he’s going to be home. Callum being there waiting for him when he gets back. It must be clear from his tone, Callum must notice, but he also must see the finality in it all. He doesn’t try to loop the conversation around, he doesn’t say _I just want you_ even though Ben can see how much effort it takes for him not to.

“I’m leaving next week.” Callum finally says, after what feels like a long time. “Thursday. If you change your mind.”

Ben doesn’t bother trying to explain that his mind doesn’t need to be changed. In his mind he’s already walking right out of the door with Callum, is already packing up all of his belongings and leaving. In reality of course, he stands in the suddenly freezing cold of The Arches and watches Callum go.

\---

The gun arrives on Monday. It’s in a padded brown envelope (which strikes Ben as pointless, you can feel exactly what’s inside) and is delivered by one of his dad’s nameless employees. They’re riding a moped and hand it to Ben at his front door like it’s a pizza delivery. Ben almost laughs.

The instructions come separately. His dad thinks Keanu knows that he knows; Sharon surely would have told him. They were apparently going to leave together. An anonymous someone found plane tickets and his passport in a hidden corner of his desk. Ben feels a little sorry for Keanu, wonders when Sharon actually told him she wasn’t going to leave with him, or why he’s still keeping his passport close by. Maybe he thinks she’s going to change her mind. Maybe she _is_ , what had Sharon said about Keanu exactly - that he was kind, that he made her feel wanted.

Isn’t that all anyone hopes for, in the end, to feel wanted? 

His dad’s house is like Sharon had never existed at all. All the photographs of her, even the ones with Ben also in, ones he may have liked to keep, are gone. All traces completely erased. His dad has replaced one of the photos with an old one of him, Ben’s mother, and a very small toddler Ben (back when he wore his glasses all the time and his hearing aid was visible). It’s a photo he’s never seen before, they’re all outside the Vic, probably when his grandmother owned it. His father looks much the same, his mother’s face is pale and pinched, looking directly at the camera with both of her hands clutching Ben’s shoulders. Ben stares at her for a long time. There’s a challenge in her gaze, her grip on him looks tight, she’s almost saying _I will get you out of here_ and she’d tried, Ben knows she did. It just hadn’t worked. 

His dad watches him stare at the photo and says, “We were never enough for her. She always wanted more.”

“More or better?”

“Does it matter?”

His dad has drawn a map, a terrible felt tip scrawl that looks like a child did it. It’s meant to be the warehouse where Keanu mainly works. It’s at the centrepoint of most of his dad’s dealings and so is exactly where Keanu should be, right at the heart of everything. Employee of the month. His dad has added disordered little squares that Ben supposes are meant to be desks.

“You want me to do it there?” Ben asks. “In the office?”

His dad nods. “I want him to see what he could have had. I want him to see you taking over.”

Ben looks at the square meant to represent Keanu’s desk. The one containing his passport and plane tickets. When Ben gets there Keanu might think that the approaching footsteps are Sharon. He might be reaching for his passport just as Ben arrives. He might turn to the door and smile. 

“Just do it quick. Don’t let him talk, and don’t you mouth off either. I know what you’re like.”

“Do you?” Ben says, lightly. 

His dad sighs. “I know I haven’t always been the best father to you Ben, but that’s gonna change. Starting now. Everything will be different. It’s just you and me. We’ll be a team.”

Ben’s heard it all before. He’s heard it with a gun in his hand, pointed at the back of his dad’s head. He’s heard it at the kitchen table, through tears. In the passenger seat of numerous cars, speeding away from things he should never have gotten involved in. At hospital bedsides. It’s always the same and Ben falls for it every single time. He’s aware of doing it, it’s like there’s an audience watching him and they’re all yelling at their screens _he doesn’t care about you_ and yet - He thinks every time that it might be the genuine time. That this is the one, the one that his actually means. It never is. 

The time with the gun (the second time with the gun) had been the closest moment of revelation. It had been just after Paul, who his dad had never wanted to get to know, and Ben had gone off the rails. Or that was an understatement, the rails were a distant glimmer on the horizon, Ben went so far off the rails that he’s never got back on. He held a gun at his dad’s head, took off the safety, and thought _I could do it _and said, “You’ve never cared about me, ever. I’ve always been a disappointment to you. You’ve never even tried,” and the studio audience applauded, probably. His dad had said it all, desperate, “You’re my boy, you’re all I’ve got. It’ll be different, I promise. Whatever you want.” And Ben had fallen for it. Again. Always. For infinity.__

__“I know,” he tells his dad. “I know we will.”_ _

__His dad smiles, as much as his dad does, it’s more a small twist of his lips. A grimace instead of a smile. “I’ve arranged a meeting with him, at the warehouse. Except you’ll go instead. Do the job and I’ll sort the cleanup. You don’t need to worry about the -” He pauses. “Other stuff.”_ _

___Other stuff_ presumably meaning the removal of Keanu after Ben has done what he's supposed to do. He grimaces. “When?”_ _

__“Thursday.”_ _

__Of course Thursday. Ben brings his hand to his mouth and bites at one of his fingers (a habit he’s never really broken from when he was a kid. One that started after his mum left). His dad watches him do it, slight disdain on his face. “Thursday?”_ _

__“Why, you got something else on?” His dad sounds surprised that Ben may have things in his life that don’t revolve around him._ _

__“No,” Ben says. “Of course not. I’ll do it.”_ _

____

\---

He tries to avoid Callum, which is impossible because Callum is suddenly _everywhere_ that Ben is. He’s always at the other end of the bar at the Vic, standing at the counter of the cafe, having intense looking conversations with Whitney at her stall, He looks tired, smudges around his eyes, and walks in a distracted way, like he’s not entirely sure where he’s going. Whitney, at one point, clasps both of her hands around one of his and says something, leaning very close to his face. Callum shakes his head.

Neither he or Callum are subtle. Every time they see each other there’s an odd moment where they both stop whatever they’re doing and just _look_. In the cafe he stirs so much milk into his tea while staring at Callum’s back that he eventually spills the whole thing over the table. Callum knocks over a pint while staring at Ben in the Vic. When Ben watches Whitney hold Callum’s hand he thinks _that should be me_ and wants to storm over and drag her away. It turns out that suddenly admitting what you want isn’t as cathartic as he’d thought it would be. Wanting becomes yearning which turns into needing. He wants to remove Whitney from Callum, finger by clasping finger, and put himself there instead. But what would he say? ( _let’s go. Anywhere. Anywhere you want. Say the word and I’m already there_.)

The other question is what _Whitney_ is saying. She doesn’t look angry with Callum. Her hands on him are supportive, reassuring, like she’s trying to convince him of something. Ben wouldn’t be that patient with someone who’d broken up with him days before their wedding, but then maybe Whitney is just a better person than he is. Most people are.

Whitney pats Callum’s cheek and Ben looks away, digs his fingernails hard into the wood of the bench he’s sitting on. When he looks back Callum is staring at him and they enter the same dance again. Ben staring at Callum staring at Ben. The corner of Callum’s mouth tilts up, hopefully, and Ben gives him an apologetic shrug. Callum purses his lips and turns to Whitney. 

They do the same thing in the Minute Mart. Stare, smile and shrug. Except Ben is tired this time; because it’s Wednesday and the job is close, so close, too close, and he’s scared. He had, completely out of nowhere, thought _I don’t want to do this_ , as he hid the gun behind his sofa. He doesn’t hate Keanu. Keanu doesn’t deserve to die and Ben doesn’t deserve to be the one to have to do it. Callum, in his head, had echoed _you don’t have to, you know you don’t_ and it was the first time he’d heard Callum instead of Paul in moments where he’s feeling vulnerable. The realisation of what that means had been almost too much. His heart aches.

He asks, “Have you decided where you’re going?” and it doesn’t come out anywhere near as casual as he’d wanted it to.

Callum’s face lights up. It’s like they haven’t spoken for months rather than days. “I’ve got some ideas. I have a few army mates all over the place so I don’t know. I might just move around and see where I fit.”

“I saw you,” Ben says. “With Whitney.”

“I saw you,” Callum replies. “Seeing me.”

“She didn’t look angry with you.”

“She was, at the start. But she’s been amazing. Nicer than I deserve. She wants me to be happy, so that’s what I’m going to do. Or to try and do.”

It’s probably going to be the last time they see each other, Ben realises. Tomorrow he will have killed someone and Callum will be gone. Weeks and months will pass and his dad will probably find another Keanu, but Ben won’t find another Callum. He’ll just carry this one around with him until he becomes a rose tinted memory (remember that baby copper who was in love with me? He wanted me to run away with him and I almost did).

Ben says, “I want you to be happy too. I really hope you are, wherever you end up.”

Callum takes a small stumbling step forwards. “I hope you are too, Ben. I want you to be. I know you think you can’t but, you _can_. You can be whatever you want. I just - I hope one day you stop being scared of it.”

It’s not a conversation for the furthest corner of the Minute Mart (in front of the canned goods, fluorescent lighting hitting every shadow on their faces), but Ben can’t bring himself to walk away like he should. “Scared of what?”

“I don’t know. Yourself? Getting away from here? Being in love?”

Ben reaches out and touches his fingertips to Callum’s. Callum opens his hand and lets Ben do it. He trails over Callum’s knuckles and says, “Maybe one day I will.”

Callum laughs hollowly. “Come and find me when you do.”

Ben leans in and kisses him, because he has to. He misses slightly, ends up under Callum’s ear rather than his cheek, and he presses his mouth there and holds it, like he’s trying to make a mark. He wants Callum to put his hand there later (much later) and remember. Callum takes a shuddery breath.

Ben leans away. “Bye then.”

Callum closes his hand around Ben’s fingers, squeezes and releases. “Bye.”

Ben doesn’t look back at him when he leaves.

\---

Jay, having always had a sixth sense for when Ben’s about to do something stupid, texts him late on Thursday afternoon saying _Pint later?_ followed by three beer emojis. Jay loves an emoji. Ben replies _Maybe_ which in hindsight was the wrong thing to do because Jay immediately phones him.

Ben is on his way to the warehouse or, more accurately, is steadily walking laps in the steadily darkening streets around the warehouse. He feels sick, like the ground beneath him is slanting, trying to turn him away from wherever he’s trying to get to. He knows, he knows, that once he does this there’s no going back. He will always be a person who killed someone. Even if no one else knows, he always will. That’s something you carry with you. And, yes, Ben has possibly been responsible for peoples’ deaths before, accidentally, and he almost certainly had been about to pull the trigger on his dad that time (and his dad had known it) but this is different. This is a tilting point that he will never get back from. 

He has to touch the gun in order to answer his phone and when he says, “Hello?” his voice is an awful shattered thing.

Jay says, “What’s wrong with you?” and, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Ben says. “Just something for my dad.”

He’d been at his dad’s this morning to go over the plan. He had looked at his mother’s photograph. Her hands on his shoulders, the look in her eyes. _I will get you out of here_.

Jay sounds suspicious. “Something like what?”

“Nothing big.” Ben chews his index finger. “Just a job. A quick one.”

“Quick,” Jay repeats.

“I can meet you later. Where? Same as last time?”

“I can come to the Square.”

“Alright, I’ll meet you there.”

“How quick is it going to be, this quick job?”

“Why are you asking so many questions?”

Jay huffs and is suddenly loud, like he’s holding the phone very close to his mouth. “Because, Ben, the last time we saw each other you told me that your dad had just found out Sharon was cheating on him with Keanu. And I said, I _told_ you, exactly how it was gonna go. And that’s what’s happened, isn’t it? He’s asked you to sort out Keanu.”

“Yeah.” Ben almost laughs. “Yeah, he asked me to sort him out.”

“How do you mean? Like, permanently?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll see you later.” 

Jay says, “ _Ben_ , don’t. Don’t do it. You’re not coming back from that, you know you’re not, you can’t, don’t -”

Ben hangs up and, without even thinking, throws his phone onto the pavement. It makes a satisfying crack, followed by an even more satisfying crunch as he stamps on it. 

His mum in the photograph, staring right down the lens at whoever was taking the picture, almost challenging. Daring someone to come and take him from her arms. _I will get you out of here_. She’d wanted to, she’d tried, she’d disappeared. Where had she been trying to take him? Anywhere away from his dad. How different would he be if they’d made it? What would he be like? Someone worthy of love, maybe. Someone worthy of Callum.

He kicks the remains of his phone around, juggles one piece in front of him all the way to the warehouse until he eventually launches it against the main doors. 

He takes a breath, counts to ten (once, twice) and walks inside.

\---

Keanu doesn’t reach for his passport. He looks at Ben and laughs, having obviously worked the whole thing out. Maybe he isn’t as dense as Ben thought he was. Ben might have been wrong about a lot of things. Keanu stays sitting, behind the desk, framed by windows caged with iron, and laughs again. Though nothing is really funny.

“Of course,” Keanu says. “Of course he’d send you.”

“You know that he found out?”

“I thought he probably had.”

“And you just sat here and waited?”

Keanu shrugs. “What could I do? She’s gone.”

Ben frowns. “Sharon?” Then shakes his head because obviously he means Sharon. “You’re not going to meet here somewhere? They said your passport -”

“She was meant to -” Keanu stops himself. “As if I’m going to tell you that, Ben, as if you’d understand. As if you’ve ever felt anything about -”

“You don’t know me,” Ben interrupts, automatically.

“No,” Keanu says. “No one does, do they? What’s your dad asked you to do then? I’m guessing not beating me up because, come on.” He gestures to himself. 

Ben removes the gun from his pocket, holds it forward with his gloved hand. Keanu takes a sharp inhale of breath, but Ben can’t imagine what else he was expecting. Keanu knows his dad better than anyone, he must have known how it was going to end up. Unless he thought his status would have saved him. Ben could have corrected him on that. Phil Mitchell isn’t sentimental about anyone. Ben says, “Surprised?”

Keanu takes a second to recover himself. “No. Not really. I can’t believe he’s getting you to do it.”

“He never gets his hands dirty.” Ben tilts his head. “You know that.”

“He did with me.” Keanu tilts his head right back. “ _You_ know that. And with Jay. And whoever else. Just never with you. How did he sell this to you? I bet I know, he said you could run things together. That you’d be a team.”

Ben clicks off the safety. “I don’t have time for -”

“I felt sorry for you, Ben. We all did. It’s never going to change, this thing.” Keanu traces a circle in the air with his finger. “It just keeps on. You have to get out. I was trying -”

“What, with Sharon?”

“I love her,” Keanu says, simply, and it’s the simplicity of it that gets Ben. He hadn’t expected it, in his mind (when he’d actually considered it) Keanu and Sharon had been sort of sordid and fleeting, enjoying the drama of sneaking around on his dad. He had never thought that Keanu loved her, or that Keanu felt strongly enough about that love to try and leave. Ben should have done that. A thought as sudden as if he’d fired the gun into his own soul.

Keanu sees him falter and takes the opportunity. “It’s worth fighting for, Ben, love. If you keep letting it pass you by -”

“What do you know about _anything_ , I -”

“- Eventually it’s not going to be there anymore. Is that what you want? I saw you, _everyone_ saw you, with that CSO, it was obvious. Why are you -”

“Don’t talk about him, you’re not -”

“- Pretending that it doesn’t mean anything? At some point you’re going to look back on your life and realise -”

“Stop,” Ben says. Keanu does. “You don’t mean any of this. You hate me, you’re trying to save yourself.”

“I don’t hate you, I never hated you. I told you, I felt sorry for you.”

“I don’t want you to feel _sorry_ for me.”

“When Paul died -”

Ben yells, “Stop. Stop, just - why are you _talking_.”

“Do you wish that you’d left together? You could have, he would have gone with you if you’d asked? Is that not something -”

Ben repeats, “Stop talking.”

Keanu stands up and opens his arms out. “Go on then. Get it done.”

Ben can’t. They both know it. 

The gun, still held in front of him, shakes in the air. Keanu tracks it with his eyes. Ben puts the safety back on, puts it back into his coat pocket. Keanu makes a small noise, relief Ben supposes, or amazement that his play had worked. Ben is always getting played, from all angles, always being manipulated by people who know his weak spots. 

“I never hated you either,” he tells Keanu. “I was jealous of you and maybe that came across like I hated you, but I didn’t, not _you_ , just what you were. And I just think everyone knew what was happening, with my dad, and no one ever did anything about it. Everyone just let me carry on doing this, this, and you’re right, about Paul, you’re right. He would have gone, anywhere that I wanted to go, but I didn’t - I don’t want to kill you. I never did. I never wanted to hurt _anyone_. I don’t want to do this anymore.” 

“You don’t have to,” Keanu says, carefully, stepping very slightly forward, like he and Ben are starting to have a heart to heart. Ben immediately shakes his head. 

“Just go. You have your passport, I’m guessing you have money?” Keanu nods, he’s probably been pulling money from the company accounts for months. “Then leave and never come back here.”

Keanu hesitates. “What are you going to tell your dad?”

“Nothing. I’m not going to tell him anything.”

“Then what are you gonna do? Where are you gonna go?”

Ben half-smiles. “Anywhere.”

\---

He fires the gun into the air, right into the rafters of the warehouse, for pure theatrics and also because his dad might have ears on the building. The bullet pings off one wall and embeds itself in a high up corner of the ceiling. It’s easier if his dad thinks that someone, whoever, got shot. Ben doesn’t think he’ll have entirely strong feelings either way: he’d be happy if he thinks it’s Keanu and disappointed if it’s Ben.

He regrets breaking his phone. He’d like to call Jay directly but instead he goes to a phone box and calls the car dealership where he works. The receptionist says Jay is with a customer so Ben asks her to take a message. “Tell him his brother phoned and I took his advice. Say sorry about the drink but I’ll text him.” He makes her read it back, which he knows she thinks is odd, but he wants to make sure it’s right. 

Keanu had taken the passport, the plane tickets, and a bundle of cash from the drawer of his desk. He clasped Ben by the shoulder as he left and Ben watched him go knowing that they’ll never see each other again. 

He doesn’t feel the natural elation that he thought he would having, for the first time in his life, disobeyed an order from his dad. He actually just feels sheer terror. When he leaves the warehouse, from the side entrance, he expects his dad to appear from nowhere and say _I knew you wouldn’t do it, you’re pathetic, I knew you didn’t have it in you_. But, even imagining what his dad may say, doesn’t quite have the same effect anymore.

His dad doesn’t appear, not at the warehouse, not in the Square, not back at the house. Ben takes the photo of him and his mother (he can cut his dad out, he thinks). When he looks at it closer, the gaze, the _I will get you out of here_ , he can see that the corners of her mouth are slightly turned up. Almost smiling. _I did it_ , he thinks, tells her. _I’m doing it right now_.

\---

He hadn’t even asked what time Callum was leaving. He jogs back into the Square and passes Whitney in the middle of closing down her stall. He doesn’t even wonder what it might imply when he asks, “Where’s Callum?”

Whitney knows about them. He can tell by the way she arches one eyebrow. He should feel bad, he supposes, guilty at least, but he doesn’t. He just feels elation that she knows, that he is a thing that Callum has shared with other people, someone that he’s told them about. It takes everything in him not to immediately ask _what did he say?_

“He left,” Whitney says. “About two hours ago.” 

Ben blinks. The Square around him seems to shudder, he has to lean out and support himself on one of the clothing racks. “He left?”

Whitney looks surprisingly sympathetic. “He said that you’d pretty much told him to.”

“I - I _did_ but, I’m here, I changed my - I did what he told me to.”

“You’re too late.” 

“Did he say where he was going?”

She shakes her head. “No. He was going to figure it out on the way.”

Ben says, “Right,” and grips the rail that he’s leaning on. “Okay. I can -” he thinks. He’s destroyed his phone, Callum can’t reach him but that’s if Callum wants to reach him. He’d said _come and find me_ so maybe he wants Ben to work for it. Ben deserves to be made to work for it. Callum has laid everything out, heart in his hands and on his sleeves, almost from the very start. Everything he’s ever thought has been clear behind his eyes. Ben should have done it back, at least a little bit. “I wasn’t ready though,” he adds, half to himself, half to Whitney. “I wasn’t ready.”

“What, but you’re ready now?” 

“Yes,” he replies and it’s incredible that she’s the first one he says it to. He adds, “I’m sorry,” because he feels like he should.

Whitney gives him a long look up and down. “I don’t need your apology.”

Ben supposes that’s fair.

\---

Ben has never been good at being vulnerable. He’s said that to a lot of people and it’s true. He’s not the person he really could have been, if his mum had managed to get away, if Sharon had taken him, if he’d walked away himself on any of the opportunities he’d had over the years. He isn’t the Ben Mitchell that he should be, but in a different way from what his dad thinks. It’s just the real one was tangled up underneath all of his protective layers, everything that he had wound so tightly about himself. He’d told Callum that all of his pieces were missing and it had been true but he’s aware of having managed to catch a few. Like he’s pulling himself back together.

He’ll tell all of this to Callum, when he sees him again. He’s already planning how, he must have had friends at the station, Ben can talk to them, he surely must be intending to text Whitney, Ben will ask, he’ll never stop asking. Maybe he’ll take a car and drive all over the UK. Put adverts in newspapers. Leave signs on lampposts. He’ll look everywhere. And eventually Callum will be there and Callum will say -

“I didn’t leave.”

Ben stops. Callum is sat on the floor outside his flat, his legs awkwardly folded underneath him, trying not to take up too much room. Ben tries to say, “What?” but it doesn’t come out as anything, he just makes a shocked noise. A gasp.

“I couldn’t,” Callum clarifies. “I got to the station and I couldn’t.”

Ben makes another gasp, apparently unable to actually form words. 

“Did you do it?”

“No,” Ben finally manages. “No, _no_. I thought about you and I thought - I haven’t lived the life I wanted, not ever. You were right, everything you said, from the start. No one’s ever just _known_ who I am like that before, or wanted to know who I am, or anything. You make me want to be better, and I don’t know if I always _will_ be, I’m not gonna pretend about that, but you make me want to try. You make me want to be myself.”

Callum unfolds himself. He’s almost too tall for the little corridor of Ben’s building, he takes up everything Ben could look at. Not that he would ever want to look at anything else. “That’s all I ever wanted you to be,” Callum says, simply, and kisses him.

Ben will never get tired of kissing Callum. He knows it, knows that there are years ahead for him to not get tired of it. Callum cradles his head in both hands, thumbs pushing at the hinge of Ben’s jaw, and Ben sighs happily. Somehow the happiest noise he’s made in years.

“I thought you’d left,” he tells Callum, leaning to open his mouth on Callum’s neck, just above his shirt collar. “I thought you’d gone without me.”

Callum says, “Without you?”

“Take me with you. Wherever you’re going.”

Callum tilts back, Ben rises with him, up onto his toes. “Really?”

“I love you,” he tells Callum. He’s not sure if he said it right the last time. 

Callum puts his hand over his heart, opens his palm and brings it forward, places his hand over the same place on Ben’s chest. “I love you.”

“Take me with you. Anywhere.”

Callum smiles and it’s the sun coming up, it’s everything good that Ben has ever wanted; it’s someone staring from a photograph and promising to save him, it’s someone in a police station waiting room looking under every shade of purple in a bruise. It’s someone who loves him, for him, for every broken but re-gathered piece that he is. “Okay.” 

Ben smiles back. “Then let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- I'm on tumblr at leblonde and twitter at leblonde4, come and say hi!


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